POY travels to The 101
By Barbara Engler

The Cardroom’s 2010 Player of the Year, Mark Lamb of Livermore, recently traveled to The 101 Casino in Petaluma for another tournament in his honor. Once again he had a bounty on his head for what proved to be a popular event.

Held Saturday, Oct. 22 at 1:00 p.m., the tournament had a $115 buy-in for 6,000 in starting chips (a $5 dealer appreciation fee was good for an extra 1,000). Rounds were 20 minutes long and the bounty on Lamb was good for a free entry into another $115 Saturday tournament at The 101. click here to read the whole article!

Park West Casinos hold NorCal Classic
By Arnold Warner

On Sept. 24 teams from the six Park West Casinos in Northern California met up at the Cordova Casino in Rancho Cordova for their first NorCal Classic No Limit Texas Hold’em Poker Tournament.

The teams for this $25,000 freeroll event were made up of 10 players each from Casino 580 (Livermore), Cordova Casino (Rancho Cordova), Delta Casino (Stockton), Lotus Casino (Sacramento), The 101 Casino (Petaluma), and Wine Country Casino (Lodi).

Team prizes took up $15,000 while $10,000 went to the top seven individuals. Points were awarded to each team based on when their players were eliminated. click here to read the whole article!

NorCal Poker Ambassador
Stacking chips: As fun as fun gets
By Randall Rapp

What is it about stacking chips that’s just so doggone fun? Sure, it has to do with money and just plain good old fashioned winning, but it feels like there’s more to it than that. Few life experiences compare to reaching out and pulling a mountain of chips in and then stacking them into powerful stacks right in front of you.

Maybe my priorities are all screwed up (it’s been said before), but I would have to rank top life experiences as follows: click here to read the whole article!

Semper Discentes
Top 10 ridiculous poker comments
By Mark Lamb

If only there were enough blank space available in our beloved Cardroom Poker News, I’d have made certain to include a few more pages worth of the void that invades my thought process when writing these articles. I wish I could tell you that ideas and topics come to me like pop-ups on a desktop computer, but the truth is it is usually a marathon staring contest between me and the wall. Oftentimes I will concede the win to the wall and take up a new contest with the ceiling.

Eventually I manage to narrow my train of thought down to a few choice topics before settling on a winner. This time I have compiled a list of poker-related phrases that have kept me entertained over the years. click here to read the whole article!

Buying-in short in NL is a bad idea
By Bernard Harris

In Mike Sexton’s words, “Hold-em takes a minute to learn, and a lifetime to master.” Pot odds, position, reads, and equity are where most focus their attention. Yet, many players are oblivious to one key factor that will make or break their win rate—their starting chip stack. A player’s starting stack has a dramatic impact on results. For the vast majority of players, buying-in short (40 big blinds [BB] or less) is akin to setting money on fire. At first glance, it may seem like a good way to save money, when in reality it’s an insidious form of self sabotage.

Poker is a game in which the odds are everything. By buying in short, we are decimating both our direct and implied odds. What this means is that plays and calls we would normally make now become mathematically incorrect because of our meager chip stack. For instance, set mining (playing a small pair hoping to flop a set) is fairly standard. click here to read the whole article!