BREAKING NEWS - Running Aces Dealers' hours reduced, benefits cut

The CPL Poker Blog has it from reliable sources that the situation at Running Aces is extremely tough. Apparently, meetings held for dealers on Friday and Saturday (11/28 and 11/29) informed them that most (if not all) of them were having their work hours reduced to part-time. Additionally, benefits were being cut or eliminated for them.

Tough times apparently at Running Aces as new management attempts to right the bottom line. Tougher times still for the dealers - there's a "Merry Christmas" for ya.

It's CPL Poker Blog's hope that the ship is righted (we like the competition the extra card room has created) not only for our own amusement and money-making, but so that their employees can earn a decent living with decent benefits.

Running Aces December Tourney Schedule Available

You can view December's scheduled tournaments at Running Aces Card Room here.

For you OH8 fans, it looks like they've shifted back to the first Sunday of the month.

Also, for you Pai Gow fans - there is No Ante/No Commission play until November 30.

Bill 'Comeback Kid' Crowned CPL Champion Fall 2008!

It was a great Tournament of Champions for the CPL!  10 members went back and forth for over 6 hours before a winner was declared, including an awesome 35 minute heads up finale between Bill 'Comeback Kid' Lanoux and Malinda 'Nemesis' Cardenas for the CPL Championship!

This TOC was filled with interesting twists and turns very similar to the entire 2008 Fall Session.  

First off, we had a massive $3000 bet, courtesy of Mike 'Una-Bomber' Bowman, on the first hand when blinds were only 10/20!!  Then we had an early chip leader by Una-Bomber who just ran over the table for several hours. I lost track of how many pocket pair he showed in the first 2 hours...and the two Ace high flushes helped a bit!

The wealth would also get concentrated as a Big Stack with 'Karaoke' Phil Fuehrer, who was the chip leader starting the TOC.

Early trouble was brewing for Greg 'NewLife' Durand who lost significant chips early...for Mark 'Verbal' Cardenas who was the short stack starting the TOC, and for Voni 'Rookie' Khang who was also short stacked going into the TOC and could not pick up a significant pot early.   

After 3 hours of play and going into level 7, all ten CPL members were still in play.  Then eliminations began....

First victim was Verbal, who was on the big blind with Karaoke limping in the pot.  Verbal hit top pair matching his Q, while Karaoke flopped a made straight.  Well that spelled disaster as Verbal went all in, was insta-called by Karaoke, and the number 10 seeded Verbal's 2008 TOC was done as he went out in 10th.  

Over the next two hours 7 more players would be eliminated.

Next in line was The Rookie, as the blinds got the best of her...and rumors started spreading about how the seeds were all going to come true...

Then going out in 8th was Jeff 'Matusow' Matson who was seeded 3rd going into the TOC.  Matusow was slightly distracted during his TOC as scheduling problems left him trying the 'win big or go home' method.  And go home he did.

Balance of Power on the table then began to shift....

Karaoke Phil was eliminated in 7th place as his significant chip lead kept was not big enough to withstand the number of hands he was in

Mike 'Blind Me Down' Behr went out in 6th place in a fairly normal tournament for Blind Me Down.  He played conservatively, bantered playfully and sometimes aggressively with Vince "The Cursed One" Castellanos and was probably one hand away from making into the points...I mean the money.

Greg 'NewLife' Durand who truly obtained new life by taking The Rookie's chips when he himself was short stacked ended up going out in 5th place.  A great tournament for NewLife who was in serious trouble early and fought back to take 5th! (Plus 16.00 in the scratch off ticket winnings!)

The Una-Bomber went out on in 4th on the CPL Ticket Bubble losing a big hand against Nemesis.  A great first CPL season and a great TOC for the Una-Bomber! 

The Cursed One went out in 3rd place and scored the first of 3 CPL Vouchers to the Running Aces Tournament.  A great match by the 'weakest' player in the CPL who steadily and solidly increased his stack of chips throughout the tournament.  Apparently The Cursed One's pleadings to a higher power worked! Time to become that better person you promised! Congrats Cursed One!

This left Comeback Kid and Nemesis to battle it out heads up.  We initially thought this would be over and done with in short order as the blinds were at level 12 (2000-4000) and Nemesis had a huge chip stack advantage....but that would not be the case.  In the longest running heads up play in CPL history (about 35 minutes) and moving to the never before seen 13th blind level of 3000/6000 the chips moved from Nemesis to Comeback, back to Nemesis, back to Comeback again and finally a Tournament of Champions Champion was crowned.  

Congrats to the three CPL Tournament of Champions Running Aces Tournament Voucher Winners for the 2008 Fall Session!  Now go out and take it down at Running Aces!

1-Bill 'Comeback Kid' Lanoux

2-Malinda 'Nemesis' Cardenas

3-Vince 'Cursed One' Castellanos

One final note....although Verbal went out in a dismal tenth place...after everyone left and the table and chips were put away...Verbal scratched off his two $1 tickets to find a $50.00 winner!  Not bad for going out in tenth place!!

--
CPL Director Mark Cardenas
and
CPL Co-Director Phil Fuehrer

Find the Podcast on ITunes: CPLDirectors Podcast

BREAKING NEWS - Stay Granted in Kentucky Domain Seizure Case

A Kentucky Court of Appeals granted a delay in the upcoming forfeiture hearing which was scheduled to determine the ownership and fate of more than 140 domain names related to online gambling and poker.

The Court of Appeals will hear from iMega (the Interactive Media Entertainment and Gaming Association) on Dec. 12 and their petition to have the lower court's ruling overturned.

Read more at Cardplayer.com

More fun with numbers, or, CPL Poker Blog rising up the charts

Month 2's Google Analytics results are in and we're looking pretty good. Our attempts to broaden out the blog to include Home Poker League Resources, Poker News and things like the Hand of the Week look to be paying off.

As we did last month - here's the map of our site's visits:
Still heavily Midwest, but we're up 13.5% on hits from various cities (59 cities last month to 67 this month), and up 15.6 % on visits (377 to 436). We also saw hits coming from 14 different countries (up from 11).

This last point is of some interest. Cities with the most visits were largely the same: Minneapolis and St. Paul led the way again. Circle Pines and Hennepin County moved up a spot with Burnsville replacing Hopkins in the top 5. The item of interest is that Sydney, Australia came in 6th - we're branching out - and, a g'day to all you down under.

On the keyword end of things, our coverage of the area's two biggest card rooms (Canterbury Park and Running Aces) led the way with 19 visits from searches. Add in our various news visits (most often about one of the two card rooms) and you have another 7 visits. Our Home Poker League Resources saw 10 visitors checking us out (with the new "Missouri Chip" getting 6 of them).

This month's stats saw us hit our high water mark for unique visitors in day at 17 - on October 29. We're pretty consistently between 10 and 15 each day. On the browser end of things - over the two full month's of stats - IE leads with 65.56% of visitor browsers, Firefox is at 19.075, 12.30% use Apple's Safari system and Google's new Chrome browser is the choice of 2.71%.

Finally, it pays to give players monikers mimicking pros. We had 7 visits from people looking for either our own league players, people with similar names to our players and those actually looking for Mike Matusow and Phil "Unibomber" Lakk, but finding our versions of them.

Drop us a line if you'd like to see us add features or items - we love hearing from you.

Karaoke Wins Week 11 Takes Over Leaderboard

In what was a very exciting evening of poker, Karaoke Phil came out on top of Week 11 and final week of the CPL 2008 Fall Session! This being Karaoke's second win of the session it moved him into the top position of the CPL Leaderboard and as such Karaoke will be the chip leader going into the coveted CPL Tournament of Champions this Saturday (11-15) at CPL Headquarters at 1:00pm!

But the night wouldn't be a CPL week without some fabulous calls, gutsy moves, incredible suck outs, and complete coolers, and we had them all during this "TOC Bubble" week where 5 CPL Members were competing for the final 3 seats at the TOC.

CPL Honorable mention must obviously go to Chris Matthews who made a very impressive run at the TOC by playing an incredible night of poker with the task of finishing 1st or 2nd place during Week 11 to claim a seat at the TOC. Unfortunately Chris came up short finishing in 4th during week 11. Chris took out Verbal (yours truly) by going All In with Pocket Aces which got an All In response from Verbal who had pocket Q's and was looking to take out the only CPL member during Week 11 who could have prevented him from making the TOC. That didn't go quite as Verbal planned however as Chris' Pocket Rockets held up. This launched Chris into a solid position to pull off a great finish to qualify for the TOC and he continued to be in great shape until there were only 4 players remaining and the CPL Plaque Round blinds got the best of him and finished him off two positions early. Thanks for providing a very dramatic end to the CPL Session Chris!

Congrats to Bill "Comeback" Kid who lived up to his moniker by coming back from only 800 chips remaining to finish in 2nd place in a heads up match repeat against Karaoke Phil for the second week in a row. Comeback Kid's finish during week 11 will place him in 2nd place on the CPL Leaderboard. Great job during Week 11 Comeback!!

Second Congratulations to Comeback Kid for making the CPL's third EVER Straight Flush! Comeback Kid went All In with KQ of Spades and hit the K high Spade Straight Flush on the Turn with an incredible suck out against The Una-Bomber who called with Pocket K's. Comeback Kid although dominated, found a way to not only hit the flush, but the Straight Flush!

"Because I have no one to talk to without Shane here" -- Comeback Kid when asked why he was being so quiet.

Bluffs were running hot during Week 11 of the CPL with Blind Me Down betting big with 8-3 off to get NewLife to laydown the better hand. In addition, in an All In bluff from the small blind with 7-3 off suit The Una-Bomber went up against The Cursed One who called with pocket 7's. The bluff gone bad took a turn for the worst against The Cursed One however as the 7-3 although dominated survived by drawing to a club flush.

"My cards are so bad tonight I can't even play weak" --The Cursed One

Did I mention that NewLife made an All In move on the flop just before the break and got Uber-Snap-Called-Chips-Shoved-In by Matusow Matson who hit a full house on the flop. Ouch.

Congrats to Una-Bomber, The Rookie, and Verbal for clinching the final 3 seats of the TOC!

Thanks to all of the CPL members who made this 2008 Fall Session another great time!
Good Luck to all during the TOC!

Below is the Final Leaderboard for the 2008 CPL Fall Session:

Name	Total Points	Starting Chip Stack at TOC
Phil	95.40	7770
Bill	91.00	7550
Jeff M	84.60	7230
Mike Behr	80.90	7050
Greg	73.00	6650
Vince	68.90	6450
Mike Bowman	65.10	6260
Malinda	61.20	6060
Voni	51.40	5570
Mark	43.50	5180
Chris	38.10
Shane	30.10

Below were the points awarded during Week 11

Phil	26.1
Bill	15.4
Mike Bowman	11.3
Chris	9.0
Mike Behr	7.7
Voni	1.0
Malinda	1.0
Vince	1.0
Jeff M	1.0
Mark	1.0
Greg	1.0
Shane	0.0

--
CPL Director Mark Cardenas
and
CPL Co-Director Phil Fuehrer

Find the Podcast on ITunes: CPLDirectors Podcast

Comeback Kid Takes CPL Week 10!

In another CPL Week that was filled with drama, Comeback Kid survived the field of 10 members in a 3 hour 11 min match!

 

Comeback Kid sat back for the early part of the night and then suddenly captured a huge amount of chips.  During heads up play against Karaoke Phil, Comeback Kid caught a Cooler as his Pocket K's held up against Karaoke's Pocket J's for the match.

 

Congrats to Jeff 'Matusow' Matson for taking the 3rd place spot!

 

7 seats clinched for the TOC with one week left!!  3 more seats are up for grabs between 5 CPL members...but time is running out for Shane and Chris who both need either a 1st or 2nd place finish to have a chance for the TOC on Saturday November 15th. Mike "The Una-Bomber" Bowman and Voni "The Rookie" Khang are in good shape to make it to the TOC and need a lot of things to go wrong to find themselves in the cold.  Yours Truly "Verbal" is the one on the TOC bubble who needs to bring his game next Wednesday in order to get a seat at the coveted CPL Tournament of Champions.

 

Week 11 is back at CPL headquarters in Blaine. 

 

 

 

CPL Leaderboard:

Jeff M	83.60	clinched TOC seat
Bill	75.60	clinched TOC seat
Mike Behr	73.20	clinched TOC seat
Greg	72.00	clinched TOC seat
Phil	69.30	clinched TOC seat
Vince	67.90	clinched TOC seat
Malinda	60.20	clinched TOC seat
Mike Bowman	53.80
Voni	50.40
Mark	42.50
Shane	30.10
Chris	29.10

 

 

Points Awarded During Week 10:

Bill	24.1
Phil	14.3
Jeff M	10.4
Greg	8.4
Mike Bowman	7.1
Voni	1.0
Mike Behr	1.0
Mark	1.0
Malinda	1.0
Vince	1.0
Shane	0.0
Chris	0.0

--
CPL Director Mark Cardenas
and
CPL Co-Director Phil Fuehrer

Find the Podcast on ITunes: CPLDirectors Podcast

Home Poker League Tip - The "Missouri Chip"

There are a few reasons to form and play a home poker league: camaraderie, something fun to do, or win some coin are just a few. Aside from these aspects one founding idea for our league was to improve our games. If our game was so great our bankroll would be too – it isn’t yet and that’s the thing - hence, the CPl player improvement goal (and hopefully future bankrolls).

That leads us to today’s Home Poker League Tip. We’ve recently implemented what we’ve termed the “Missouri Chip” - as you may have heard in some past podcasts. As we all know (okay, maybe not more than 10% of the population outside of Missouri) is that the Missouri state motto is “The Show Me State”. What does that have to do with poker, you ask? The Missouri Chip gives you an opportunity, once per match, to force an opponent to show his/her cards. For leagues that have player improvement as a goal this is an innovative way to add an educational element to the game. No, not teaching all your members trivia about all 50 state mottos, but allowing a player to see just why they are folding. Did they get the pants bluffed off of them? Did they make the lay down of the century? Does Tina really go all in during the first level any time she’s dealt 8/3 off suit on the button and she’s first in? The Missouri Chip gives players a chance to learn a little something about playing styles and difficult situations.

For our league, it’s one chip per person per match. You may only use your chip immediately prior to (or with) your fold. If more than one other opponent is still in the hand (say a bet from Tom and a raise from Jane) and you fold you must designate which player’s cards to see (for example, “I’m going to use my Missouri Chip on Jane and fold.”). Finally, if a player doesn’t use their chip and gets knocked out the unused Missouri Chip goes to the player winning the hand. Obviously, we have a few more minor rules regarding the chip but this gives you a starting idea for your home poker league. Use the Missouri Chip in your league to add an extra element of learning for your players and improve everyone’s game.

Note: Listen to the 10/13/08 podcast to hear a discussion of the Missouri Chip

Election Day Treat - Zombies??

In honor of our progressives friends for today's election - enjoy (and listen all the way til the end):

This is from the the 1940 Bob Hope film: The Ghost Breakers

The Blind Me Down "Hand of the Week" - A Matrix Mess

So I left you last week with an Omaha H/L hand (see previous hand of
the week blog entry for details). Our decision was to fold and be
left the short stack, call and hope to hit or move all in and pray
everything goes our way. Being that we were in the money already, I
was playing to make it to the final table. I decided to push all my
chips in and hope to scoop a pot that would have put us to above
average chip status. So all 5220 went in when it came around to me
and this forced out the UTG who initially raised it to 1000 to start
out this round. Seat 4 obviously called and the river was a Jc. My
hands shot up and as I almost screamed with joy all the chips went in
his direction. I looked over and noticed 2 kings in his hand. The
second 2 on the turn gave him a full house, kings full of deuces. He
hit his set on the flop and never looked back. After thinking about
the hand for a while afterwards I decided that I was blinded by my
own hands draws and didn't have enough time to think about all the
different possibilities. In a live game with plenty of time to think
I may have laid this down when the second 2 came on the board. At the
end of the day, it really comes down to the fact that Omaha sucks!

This weeks hand of the week comes from a $10 Matrix game on Full
Tilt. Yes its true, I did declare 2 podcasts ago that I would never
play these again, but now I'm hooked. It's never a boring minute in
these games and I've come to love the fast paced action they provide.
So here's the setup. Our hero has made it to round 8, the 80/160
round and is still playing in all 4 matrix events. There are only 4
players left in this match which means we are sitting on the money
bubble. Everyones favorite spot. I'm sitting in seat 1, the small
blind, and look down at 7c 7s. Seat 7 (7095 chips) folds, Seat 9
(1285 chips) folds and it comes around to us. Our hero (2540 in
chips) decides to smooth call with his pocket 7's and hopefully see a
cheap flop. (Listen to the podcast and you should be hearing Mark
yell at our hero for doing something he wouldn't have done.) The BB
(2580 in chips) checks and the flop comes 3s 5s 4s. It doesn't get
too much more interesting than that. I decide to bet 160 into the pot
of 320 to see where we are at. The BB hesitates for a few seconds and
puts in a raise to 640. Our hero takes a moment and calls the 480
more. At this point we have 1740 left and the BB has 1800. The pot is
now 1600. The turn is the Kd. I decide to check and the big blind
bets out 800. We are left with a big decision here. What do you think
the BB has and what do you think we should do? We have a middle pair
to the board, a flush draw and a straight flush draw. And remember,
all the while this is happening, we are still in 3 other games
grabbing for our attention.

Check out this weeks podcast which can be found here on the blog or
on iTunes under CPL poker podcast to see what Mark and Phil decide to
do with this Matrix mess.

-Blind Me Down

Karaoke and Hollywood Win CPL Super Satellite to Running Aces HPT!

In a great match that lasted just under 5 hours Karaoke Phil and Hollywood Bauer captured the top two spots of this CPL Super Satellite and earned the cash to move on the Running Aces Satellite to the HPT!

The deep stack (8000 chips) tourney of 10 CPL members was a tough, tough crowd where no CPL member was eliminated until Level 7 and where 7 of the 10 made it to the CPL Plaque Rounds!! But the Plaque rounds started to get the better of everyone and members starting falling and by level 13 it was all over with Karaoke Phil and Hollywood Bauer on top.

Karaoke Phil played a great match where his reads were frighteningly accurate throughout the night. He used these reads to take a massive chip lead by taking out Comeback Kid and this big chip lead would sustain him until the CPL Plaque Rounds. However during these rounds he saw this stack eaten away and for a brief time, Karaoke gave up the chip lead. But Karaoke gritted his teeth and focused on getting the chips back....which he did and found himself in a power position able to pick and choose which hands to play to eliminate his competition.

Hollywood Bauer was non-existent in the early rounds of play, which is completely his MO. This super conservative style of play served him well as he had chips remaining at the right time in order to make his move. And make his move he did...and he found himself in the final three with a two to one chip lead over Malinda 'Nemesis' Cardenas. He did put his tournament life on the line several times and at the very end of the match went all in one more time against the big stack of Karaoke's and survived Phil's live 8-5 to double up with Queen high.

CPL Honorable Mention goes out to 'Nemesis' Cardenas who finished in the unenviable 3rd place position on the bubble. Malinda played a great tournament and simply ran out of cards and chips as the blinds moved to 3000/6000.

CPL Honorable Mention also goes out to Blind Me Down Behr who went out in 4th place on a Cooler where his A-Q was no good against Karaoke's A-K.

Both Hollywood and Karaoke will be keeping us posted on their quest to the HPT Main Event! Good Luck and represent the CPL well!!

Thanks to everyone who participated in this event....it was a great time and I really enjoyed seeing everyone including Pam and Steve and Scott who we haven't seen for a while!!

One more side note....yours truly won the scratch off ticket contest by scratching $13.00 on one ticket!!

Quote of the Evening:

"Scratch Happy? That was my nickname in High School." --Comeback Kid

--
CPL Director Mark Cardenas
and
CPL Co-Director Phil Fuehrer

Find the Podcast on ITunes: CPLDirectors Podcast