Congratulations to Norman Chad - first WSOP Cash

ESPN Poker Commentator Norman Chad has apparently had enough of simply reporting on the happenings at the WSOP - he wants to be reported on!!

Well, here goes. It seems that Norman has been working on his Stud8 game (something Karaoke Phil appreciates). Norm just missed cashing in Event #37's Stud8 but accomplished the feat in Event #53 (again, Stud8) where he finished 32nd out of 467 entrants and bested out Barry Greenstein, Daniel Negreanu and Justin Bonomo who also cashed. This is Norman Chad's first ever WSOP cash.

The CPL congratulates Norman Chad on his accomplishment and hopes to see some coverage of it on ESPN.

BREAKING NEWS - OPR/FullTilt near agreement, oh, and tonight's CPL Monday Madness Password

Official Poker Rankings (OPR) has published this statement today on their website:

Update:
June 29, 2009: We are currently communicating with FTP to find a solution. We expect that we will be able to reinstate FTP within a few days. Thank you for your continued support.

This appears to be following the same general track that OPR needed to take with PokerStars in April. While OPR makes that agreement seem to be somewhat tenuous in nature let's hope they reach a more conclusive and long lasting accord with FullTilt.

And, don't forget that tonight is CPL Monday Madness!!! Everyone is welcome to play. The $50,000 HORSE Championship is underway at the WSOP, but we can almost guarantee that the best online HORSE players will be sitting in our game tonight.

When: 8:30 pm Central time, Monday - June 29
Where: FullTilt - private tourney tab
What: HORSE
Password: As always - CPL

A controversial hand takes place at Rush Creek Golf

Monday night is usually reserved for the CPL Monday Madness on Full
Tilt for Mr Mike77 and Black Murano, but two of the CPLs finest
(insert laugh track here) decided to venture off to the Rush Creek
Golf Course for their second ever poker night held in the restaurant
area of the clubhouse. The tournament seated around 17 entries and we
got underway. Through a random selection of seats the CPL'ers were
seated right next to each other, Mr Mike77 seated to the left of
Black Murano. Play started and Mr MIke77 started chipping up bit by
bit and took a rather nice size pot a few hands in when he flopped
aces and queens against someone with A 6 off suit. Raised preflop and
bet on the flop the player still decided to take a stab at the hand
with a large bet on the river only to see his ace crap crushed by my
aces up.

This leads us into the controversial hand for the evening. With the
blinds still at 25/50 Black Murano raises it to 150 from early
position. Directly to his left I look down at As Ks and decide to
bump it up to 350. The table folds back around to Black Murano who
calls the additional 200 without much thought. The flop comes out Js
7c 6s and Black Murano checks. I think for a moment and put out a bet
of 450 into a pot of 775. This puts the pot total at 1225. Black
Murano instantly pushes all in. Now of course there are more then
just the cards to look at here as these two players have history.
LOTS of history at the tables. Not to mention a 5 dollar last longer
bet. But if we were to push all that aside just for a moment and look
at the cards here is what we would see. By my figuring I decide that
Black Murano has either of these hands: A J (most likely in my mind),
K J, Q J, J's, 10's or maybe 10 J (as it is such a famous hand now).
I don't put him on A's, K's or Q's as I think this may have prompted
a re-raise from him preflop. So I think to myself that my flush draw,
if I were to hit, would be good. As well as either my ace hitting or
my king hitting. This gives my a total of at least 12 outs and
possible 15. At 12 outs I'm 48% and at 15 I'm 60% to hit my hand.
There is 1225 in the pot before he moves all in. If I remember right,
it was around 2575 more that he put in making the total pot 3800.
It's 2125 for me to make the call. This puts the pot odds at around
55%. I think about all this for a while (big surprise to all I'm
sure) and try to put all the numbers together in my head as the table
gets sort of antsy for a move. In the end I decided I had the correct
odds to make this call and that it was probably all just a coin flip
for this pot that would knock Black Murano out of the tournament or
leave me with around 825 chips left to fight on. With the blinds at
25/50 I could certainly see myself getting right back into this thing
with 825 so I made the call. Black Murano flips over pocket Q's, a 5
of spades comes on the turn, I make my nut flush, the turn is a blank
and I go on as he is knocked out of the game.

All this left a bit of a sour taste in the Muranos mouth as a hand
shake wasn't even accepted as he got up from the table grumbling
about what a horrible call it was. Which leads me to the question for
everyone out in CPL land. Was it the right call to make?

As a side note, Black Murano was let back in the game a blind level
later as apparently they were allowing rebuys into this free
tournament. He was later removed once again with a string of horrible
cards after horrible cards that gave him no chance to get back into
the swing of things. Mr MIke77 went on to take second place and
lasted in a heads up match with the winner for around 20 minutes.
With the chip stacks within a thousand of each other I moved all in
with pocket 8's against A 4 and lost to a pair of aces.

For only 17 entries (and some rebuys) this tournament provided great
gifts and a lot of fun. Gift cards to Rush Creek were given away as
prizes, first place-$50, second place-$30 and third place-$20. So who
wants to go golfing now?

-Blind Me Down (Mr Mike77)

Response from FullTilt regarding OPR situation

After berating us for not using our registered email account (hey, we don't need any sort of retaliation from our favorite site - but sometimes they screw up) we got an answer to our email. It provides some hope - as we understand it, PokerStars wanted something changed a while back and they came to an agreement with OPR tweaking their site and putting info back up. That appears to be what FullTilt is also looking to do.

The email (relevant parts) appears below and is signed by "Gearoid, Poker Specialist" (hey, didn't I spank that guy at the final table of Mini FTOPs #4 - I don't know, cuz they've banned OPR from letting me see my data.....). Do the right thing FullTilt and work with OPR so they can continue " provid(ing) a great service to (their) customers."

-------------------Email from FullTilt---------------
"...We are currently working with all of our affiliates to ensure their business practices are consistent with our goal of providing the best online poker experience. In particular, we are ensuring they adhere to our very high standards of game integrity and do not support the use of prohibited or restricted software.

Official Poker Rankings provides a great service to its customers, and as poker players ourselves, we fully appreciate the value of the information they provide. Unfortunately, some of the information currently available may allow players to obtain an unfair advantage at the tables.

We are currently in communication with Official Poker Rankings to establish a set of guidelines that is in the mutual interest of all parties, including our valued players. We hope to have the matter resolved as soon as possible and appreciate your patience in the meantime.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact us. We're always here to help.

Regards,

Gearoid
Poker Specialist
Full Tilt Poker Support"

Official Poker Rankings frozen out by FullTilt

FullTilt, in their obviously less than infinite wisdom, has demanded of OfficialPokerRankings.com (OPR) that they (OPR) NOT report tourney results on OPR's web site (i.e. - banning Official Poker Rankings). What a crock. Read the CPL's letter to FullTilt -
------------------------------------------------

FullTilt:

C'mon. Really? Banning OfficialPokerRankings because it provides an "unfair advantage"? Reasons why that's asinine:

1) Anyone can request to NOT have their information revealed (if you believe you're at some sort of disadvantage - take your own info off the listings)
2) It's free and open to anyone to use - if you and I both have an "advantage" then neither of us has an "advantage" (though we dispute that there really is any advantage to be had, because...)
3) It doesn't really tell you much (if anything) that you can use against another player. No hand histories, no % of times betting, folding, re-raising, hands played, VPIP, etc. No cash game history. No idea of whether you're a tight/aggressive, loose/passive, etc. player. Only results are shown. Over the long haul, they can ONLY tell you that whatever this guy does works well or doesn't work so well.
4) FullTilt - you provide YOUR OWN leader board information including nicely customizable leader board filtering - where's the big difference??


Reasons to allow OPR rankings to stay up:

1) For lower stakes players it IS truly important to watch your own stats move up the "rankings". OPR isn't used to "scout" other players, but to monitor your own progress (based on OPR's definition of progress).

2) When it comes to those other players - the ones most of us look at are our friends and acquaintances. Why? To monitor their hoped for progress and movement up the rankings. It's community, boys. One of the reasons you have your own FullTilt Forums. And, surprise, the forums aren't the only way to build community - many of us track friends on OPR.

3) Collusion Control - While we haven't used it for this purpose ourselves - we can certainly see where it could be useful to look at various in-the-money results to see if players "Ima Colludin" and "WithMe" seem to be working together in various tournies.
We strongly urge you to reconsider your directives towards OPR and allow them to operate as they were.

Deeply Disappointed,
CPL Poker Blog and Podcast

CPL Founder Scores 2nd Victory During Week 5

Some would call it luck....some would call it unbelievable odds....some would call it the most amazing string of suck outs ever seen during the CPL...

However you call it, the result was that Verbal Cardenas scored his second win of this CPL Summer Session by having the required '3' suck outs during the match against a short field of 9 CPL members. The biggest suckout came during a 3 way All In where Verbal's JJ was severly outmatched by Nanoman's KK and even worse to Comeback Kid's AA. Yet once once the River showed the case J (3rd J was confirmed to be mucked)...Verbal swept in over 9000 of the 27000 chips in play....which carried him to heads up play.

In heads up play against Blind Me Down Behr it would be no cake walk....and very little walking of any kind was seen as these two sent chips back and forth between them. In the end Verbal woke up with AQ suited to retire Blind Me Down.

Quote of the Week:

"If play on PitBull poker online is slower...you would just take longer to decide to fold." --Matusow Matson to Blind Me Down.

CPL Leaderboard (Unadjusted)

Points Awarded During Week 5

Week 4 Poker In The Hood Goes To Matusow Matson!

CPL Poker In The Hood is becoming quite the tradition for the CPL, however the tradition normally ends in NewLife being the only player left at the table with all of the chips. During CPL Summer Session Week 4, a new tradition was started as the host of Poker In the Hood, Jeff Matusow Matson took down the first place spot after finishing his 40 oz!

Even more amazing was the performance of Comeback Kid Lanoux who was severly impaired after his 40 oz (insert Scotty Nguyen HORSE clip here...) however managed to pull off a second place finish! Congrats to Bill for also taking over the CPL Point lead with his finish!

CPL Honorable Mention goes to Vince "The Cursed One" Castellanos for showing up to say hi during the match! We look forward to seeing Vince again during the Winter Session!

CPL Leaderboard (Unadjusted)

Points Awarded During Week 4

Comeback Kid Wins Summer Week 3

Bill Comeback Kid Lanoux pulled his regular 'comeback' during week 3 to take down the week over a short field of only 8 CPL members.

Steve The Chaser Bennewitz gave Comeback Kid a run for his money during heads up play...but was unable to knock Lanoux out and ended up in second.

Congrats to Comeback Kid!

CPL Leaderboard (Unadjusted)

Points awarded during CPL Week 3

Monday Madness - RAZZ night full of guests

There were only 4 CPLers last night of the 14 who played RAZZ, but our own Comeback Kid - Bill Lanoux - came back to take it down. That had to be especially sweet given the fact that he had faced the nuts in 2 out of 5 hands (about 25 hands earlier when 3-handed) and taken massive hits with his own very good holdings (I think 6/7 and 5/7 hands).

But, the big news of the night was the presence of several guests: WMFT from Australia, bighern from Denver and WhistleDixie from Baltimore were in attendance. And, it didn't occur to me at the time (since I've played him before), but I belive Pilot49 was a guest as well. Who knew that RAZZ would bring in the most guests we've had???

Hope to see you all at next week's CPL Monday Madness!!!!

Monday Madness Password for 06/08

It's CPL Monday Madness time again. Tonight's (06/08/09) game will be the "Cadillac of Poker" - No Limit Hold 'em. Full Tilt - private tourney tab - 8:30 pm Central Time. Password is:

CPL

See you all there!!!

BREAKING NEWS - Minnesota DPS drops enforcement action on ISPs

The Poker Player's Alliance posted this press release touting victory in getting Minnesota's Department of Public Safety - Alcohol and Gambling Enforcement Division to drop it's imprudent attempt to get ISP providers to block internet access to certain sites.

Rep. Pat Garofalo (who had introduced HF 2370) stated that DPS dropped the idea of this action after "the legal position underlying the issuance of the notices was reconsidered." Or, in other words, the boys at DPS stepped in it, had no chance of winning any and all law suits that would've stemmed from it and decided it was better to tuck tail and return to relative obscurity.

Many thanks, and good job, to all the CPL Poker Blog readers who took action on this!!!!