The UK’s first legal poker club is about to be open in Nottingham at Dusk Till Dawn.

The latest Pokerstars Asia Pacific Poke Tour was held at the Grand Waldo Hotel in Macau last weekend. Organized in grand style with an impressive oriental feel generated through an opening ceremony replete with gongs, drums and a Chinese lion dance before international poker veteran Scotty Nguyen made the traditional shuffle up and deal call, the tournament attracted 352 entries.

Lots of professional players such as Joe Hachem, Liz Lieu, Isabelle Mercier, John Juanda, Jeffrey Lisandro and Bertrand Grospellier were eager to win the $225 640 main prize. By day 2 the number of stars had decreased to 74. Among the stars to continue the game were  Scotty Nguyen, Joe Hachem, Bertrand Grospellier, Bill Chen and Internet hotshot Hevad ‘Rain’ Khan.

The game was rather tough even for the pros. Eventually 9 people with the following chip counts took part in the final table: Dinh Le (710 000), Guillaume Patry (575 000), Ivan Tan (549 000), Bertrand Grospellier (455 000), Sangkyoun Kim (422 000), William Tan (293 000), Liz Lieu (232 000), Simon Randall (159 000), Joe Hachem (130 000).

Finally, the relatively unknown Dinh Le became the winner. He took home the title and the $225, 640 main prize. Ivan Tan took the second place and the check for $129, 536.

Together with the terrific increase in popularity of online poker games and Texas Holdem Poker in particular, millions of new players are attracted to numerous online poker rooms. The majority of these players have already had a certain experience with home and casino games, but they definitely are inexperienced newbies in comparison to winning Texas Holdem pros, frequenters of the web’s most crowded poker rooms. Although all widely televised Texas Holdem events, such as World Series of Poker and World Poker Tour attract millions of new players, promising great entertainment and huge earnings, you mustn’t believe everything you see on TV.

If you watch one of those thrilling Texas Holdem games, where some average player grabs an incredibly huge pot and feel ready to deposit half of your monthly income to repeat his exploit, then you’re already on the slippery way to bankruptcy, or at least serious losses. Remember that some of the TV plays are hopelessly bad and that everything shown on TV is just a show after all. They show you a lucky guy, who won his million at ease, but they won’t tell you how many months he spent learning Texas Holdem strategy, practicing tricks and improving his play. I just try to say that if you are planning to become a winning Texas Holdem player, you need to pay attention to your knowledge and skills, not TV.

First of all, poker hands you see on TV don’t exactly represent what makes a Texas Holdem player really strong. Each of the world famous super stars spent months studying and practicing the fundamentals of Texas Holdem poker and keep improving their skills even now, when they have already became top-ranked poker professionals. They devote the majority of their time to study new things and improve their knowledge and practical skills.

Although Texas Holdem seems to be a very simple game, it has a number of shades and niceties, which are as important as knowledge of basic tactics and rules. They aren’t very flashy, but they must be studied and continually mastered before you can consider yourself a real professional.

The essential skills required for a steady and successful Texas Holdem career are:

1. Discipline. No skills and luck matter if you aren’t patient and disciplined. Each stage of your Texas Holdem career requires both – starting from the patience, when you study and up to strict discipline, when you play.

2. Knowledge and understanding of the betting structure and all the ensuring consequences. You must know how to steal the blinds from your opponents and you must be able to protect your blinds, you must learn to build a pot encouraging your opponents to bet and you must be aware of pot odds and much more, because all ring Texas Holdem game concepts appeal to betting.

3. Learn all specialties and niceties of different types of Texas Holdem poker. The majority of televised Texas Holdem events run No-Limit Texas Holdem, which is slightly different in comparison to Limit Texas Holdem, but although these are two branches of the same game, many tactics and tricks applicable in No-Limit Texas Holdem tournaments are simply useless in Limit Texas Holdem ring games.

4. You must perfectly know good starting hands and hands worth to call and raise with. Tight play implies folding the majority of hands you get dealt with, but in the long run tight players always dominate their loose opponents, even though loose players may seem to be winning more games.

5. Finance and money management. You must know how to manage your bankroll and how much money you need to enter a certain game.

Study the basic fundamentals of Texas Holdem and move on improving your skills and earning your first money using your brain, not luck. Going this way, you will quickly feel the real value of knowledge and skills and see their efficiency and advantage over luck and loose play.

Alfonse D’Amato, the chairman of the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), speaking at the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) in Las Vegas claimed that online poker (before other internet casino games) would be made legal in the US within two years. Terrence Lanni, chairman and CEO of MGM Mirage, Gary Loveman, chairman, CEO and president for Harrah’s Entertainment and Andre Wilsenach, CEO of the Alderney Gambling Control Commission support Mr D’Amato.

Still, the common opinion is that there is little player protection as long as the US ban on online gambling keeps reputable organizations from regulating.

The former Senator’s predictions are based on pending sanctions by the World Trade Organization following the government’s current policy on internet gambling. Any sanctions ensued could affect non-gaming corporations.

Now, Ladbrokes.com’s customers can enjoy the latest three-dimensional virtual reality poker where the three-dimensional avatar displays the same human-like movements that have been developed for video games.

With the feature described, players can still play on any table but now with the option of playing three-dimensionally. And it’s not the only advantage. The new service will also make it possible for the players to speak to each other “using voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) as well as existing text chat”. It cannot but enhance their online poker experience. Besides, the new service enables players to develop “their skills by using interactive tutorials and a practice mode with advice and tips from online poker experts”. At the same time, three-dimensional players will have access to the same poker tournaments and cash games as the other players.

Ladbrokes.com is proud of being the first site to go “virtual”.

An absolutely new event – a ladies-only game – is said to be added to the Irish Poker Open 2008.

Beginning on March 19th, player will vie in the 300 euro buy-in Super Satellite for a seat at the Main Event, which will start on the 20th with a 4,200 euro buy-in.

The poker fest will take place at the CityWest Hotel in Dublin. It’ll be finished off with a 1,500 euro buy-in No Limit Hold’em Freezeout, a Pot Limit Omaha Rebuy and another new event, the No Limit Hold’em Double Chance Scalp.

As for the Irish Open Ladies event, it will take place on March 22nd. It will be a No Limit Hold’em Freezeout tournament where women will buy in for 300 euros.

Nikki Newman, head of poker at paddypowerpoker website, thinks that the event will help bring more women into the game.

A new Internet poker site will soon b released at KojakPoker.com by 24hPoker.com in partnership with Nordic Casino Ltd.

Nordic Casino, a major European media group, attracted attention of 24hPoker.com, the site belonging to 24hPoker Holding AB – a Swedish gaming group. The fact that Nordic Casino provides good marketing possibilities could not but be taken into consideration, as it is considered to be a key factor for success in the gaming industry.

24hPoker is licensed in Malta offers poker, a sportsbook and casino in the English language using 24hNetwork, Boss Media and Net Entertainment software.

An illegal poker game in Manhattan turned out to be the last day in the life of a former professor, Frank DeSena of Wayne. He was shot dead by a few gunmen wearing ski masks.

The game was held on the fifth floor of a commercial building on Fifth Avenue. The motive of the crime remains unclear. The gunmen managed to get in and opened the fire in spite of the fact that there was a guard on the ground floor. DeSena was shot in the torso. He was pronounced dead in the hospital.
DeSena was known to be a man who liked gambling. The fact that he was involved into illegal games surprised the people who knew him.

As for the poker game, it was going on for quite a while in the building. The investigation is going on, but as of Saturday, there were no arrests in the shooting.

Being the winner of ten WSOP bracelets and two WSOP Main Events, the first man to earn $1 million in poker tournaments, Doyle Brunson is going to take part in the soon to be televised series – High Stakes of Poker – where the minimum buy-in goes from $100,000 to $500,000. The event will be aired on November 5th.

Patrik Antonius, Daniel Negreanu, Jamie Gold and Barry Greenstein will also take part in the event. To attract amateurs, Guy Laliberte – the co-founder and CEO of the event – will enter the event as well. As Brunson quipped, Guy is the only guy who can really afford to play this high.

UltimateBet.com promises to take the online poker experience to a new and very exciting level with the launch of its latest software update which is full of new features.

A new resizable poker table function will enable players “to expand their viewing area along with the ability to tile and cascade tables for maximum organization”. Players will find there an option saving poker hand histories directly to a player’s hard drive. Besides, a unique hand history video player will allow players to relive a win or bad beat.

Being an existing UltimateBet.com player, you’ll get the update the next time you load game. New players can download the software for free.