Stud Hi-Lo Poker Tips

Stud Hi-Lo Poker

Often players approach Stud Hi-Lo from completely the wrong angle. They will often adopt a very Omaha Hi-Lo approach of looking to scoop both the high and low.

Obviously that would be nice in Stud Hi-Lo as well, but it isnt the best basis of your strategy. In Stud Hi-Lo it is much more important to clearly go for one or the other, and a direction that isnt getting heavy competition from your opponents.

Lets illustrate with a few examples.

AK2 - looks a theoretically attractive starting hand, whereas it isnt particularly. With 4 cards to come you'd need to hit 3 lows for a low hand, and the 2 is essentially worthless to the high hand. You are going for both high and low, but not really going for either.

234 - With everyone else looking like they are going for high - great, push the betting

AAK - With everyone else looking like they are going for low - great, push the betting

357 - With everyone else looking like they are going for low - put the breaks on, or muck the hand on 4th/5th street

KQJ - With everyone else looking like they are on high hands - put the breaks on, or muck the hand on 4th/5th street if it doesnt improve

Stud is a lot about comparisons, and there is no point getting yoursef into expensive battles for half the pot. Sure in an ideal world we'll start with A23 suited, and we will clean up on a flush and a low, but in reality the margins are made not on hope, but on being alert to the upcards to the board and playing for the half pot that isnt getting the competition.

Enjoy your Stud Hi-Lo poker, it is a great game, with often great margins for those more savvy players

EPT Germany

EPT Germany 2008 - Main Event Result

1 € 933,600 Michael "Timex" McDonald
2 € 528,500 Andreas Gülünay
3 € 307,000 Torsten Haase
4 € 234,200 Diego Perez
5 € 193,000 Claudio Rinaldi
6 € 152,000 Johannes Strassmann
7 € 120,200 Thibaut Durand
8 € 85,500 Christian Harder
9 € 52,200 Alexander Milanov
10 € 52,200 Danny Ryan
11 € 41,100 Tyler Friederich
12 € 41,100 Daniel Carter
13 € 31,700 Manfred Hammer
14 € 31,700 Jiri Kulhanek
15 € 22,150 Aniol Alcaraz
16 € 22,150 Marco Liesy
17 € 17,400 Raul Paez
18 € 17,400 Peyman Mohammadzadeh
19 € 17,400 Jan Heitmann
20 € 17,400 Christopher Rossiter
21 € 17,400 Marcel Cesarz
22 € 17,400 Marcel Luske
23 € 17,400 Hugo Felix
24 € 17,400 Syikrai Istafan

Tunica 2008 Main Event Result

1 $ 428,210 Bart Tichelman
2 $ 236,163 Donald Nicholson
3 $ 129,760 Giovanni Maracci
4 $ 103,808 John Devia
5 $ 77,856 Ben Sabrin
6 $ 64,880 Mark Garner
7 $ 51,904 Ryan Young
8 $ 38,928 Tom Schneider
9 $ 25,952 Jordan Rich
10 $ 18,166 Jesse D. Maupin
11 $ 18,166 Tom Franklin
12 $ 18,166 Jeremiah Vinsant
13 $ 15,571 Dustin Bailey
14 $ 15,571 Charles Horvath
15 $ 15,571 Charles Cardin
16 $ 12,976 Tim Frostad
17 $ 12,976 Josh Arieh
18 $ 12,976 Jesse Dean

Chip Reese dies

Very popular pro Chip Reese has died at the age of 56. He died after a bout of pnemonia.

Reese was widely regarded as the best Stud player in the world, and was a regular at the biggest Las Vegas cash games.

In 2006 he won the WSOP 50K HORSE, a win which got him many accolates of being the best poker player in the world. Reese, always polite and modest, would've no doubt disputed this, but with the 50K HORSE win, and 2 other WSOP bracelets he was certainly right up there with the best.

He will be sadly missed by the broad poker community, particularly his friends and regulars from the Bellagio.

Tony G Moscow Millions

Tony G has won the first ever Moscow Millions, an event which looks likely to grow quickly over the forthcoming years.

Tong G, infamous for his "Bring on the Russians" tirade against Ralpe Perry, really did put his money where his mouth is, taking down the event against a small, but high quality field.

A great win for Tony. Just over 200K. Well done

EPT Dublin Result

The Result of the Dublin EPT Main Event

1. Reuben Peters €532,620
2. Annette "Annette_15" Obrestad €297,800
3. Reijo Manninen €178,680
4. Trond Eidsvig €127,630
5. Daan Ruiter €105,510
6. Anders Pettersson €83,380
7. Michael Durrer €66,370
8. Thierry van den Berg €47,650
9. Casper Hansen €30,630

All prize amounts are in Euros, which currently exchanges broadly at the same value as the US$

EPT Dublin - Main Event

221 players pitched up to play Day 1a of the Main Event

48 players survived from Day 1a, with Andy Black amongst the leaders. Here are the chip leaders

Mike McDonald 67250
Dave Colclough 59350
Phidias Georgiou 55475
Kristian Kjøndal 53150
Jacques Zaicik 48225
Andrew Black 45675
Simon Christensson 45000
Christoffer Egemo Hansen 43050
Kevin Vreeswijk 42725

Eric Seidel, Barny Boatman and ElKy have all busted

Prizes up for grabs

1 € 532,620
2 € 297,800
3 € 178,680
4 € 127,630
5 € 105,510
6 € 83,380
7 € 66,370
8 € 47,650
9 € 30,630
10 € 30,630
11 € 23,820
12 € 23,820
13 € 20,420
14 € 20,420
15 € 15,320
16 € 15,320
17-24 € 10,210

Potripper Controversy

Things have been raging about the Potripper controvery for a while now.

To summerize, a long term internet pro CrazyMarco came second to Potripper in Absolute Poker's biggest tournament (the $1000 buy-in). He was so suspicious of his play, which included some outrageous calls, that he asked for the hand histories.

The hand histories sent included a little more than perhaps Absolute would normally send out, in fact it contains IPs of players, email addresses of players, and similar for the observers as well.

One of these observers tracked Potripper for the entire tournament. You'd have to say that was unusual.

After considerable investigations it transpired that this observer ID belonged to a consultant of Absolute, who had somehow managed use his high status position to breach elaborate security to create a superuser account which count see the hole cards. He ran this ID alongside (railing) his Potripper ID (part of his cover-up), so he could see the cards as he was playing.

If we fastforward to the present, Absolute has done initial investigations and confirmed the breach and have compensated players, and people who had there personal information leaked.

Security has been tightened, but they are also undergoing a far more detailed investigation and review to ensure that any person affected isnt out of pocket and to ensure the matter doesnt happen again.

The problem with employing systems experts is probably always this sort of temptation to them, and the online industry will have to learn a little from high cash volume activities in the real world. Activities such as the elaborate security at bricks and mortar casinos, where all employees with potential access to minipulating events to steal money are monitored by an elaborate chain of security levels, where huge numbers of people would have to be in cahoots for activities to go undetected. Similarly, high level IT professionals need to have similar monitoring by others who do not "touch the money", and in turn those doing the monitoring need to be monitored. It is too much to expect to be able to just trust employees/consultants with access to core code in a "cash" industry. Many more levels should, and inevitably will, be put in place to prevent a repeat of these events.

TheV0id stripped of WCOOP title

He appeared from nowhere to take down the biggest tournament in online poker history (the 2007 WCOOP Main Event), winning over a million dollars, however almost as quickly he has been consigned to history as the biggest cheat.

TheV0id, it is heavily speculated (and lets face it, very likely) was running several IDs in the tournament. This doesnt really give any edge hand to hand, but what it does mean is that he could play each ID very loose aggressive, knowing that if one or more busts out be is still alive in the tournament. What this breaks is PokerStars "One Person per tournament" rule, echoing what is obviously the case in live poker.

Whereas in MTTs two players can come from the same IP (eg you and your brother are playing the same tourney), those two IDs must always be different people. Pretty hard to check sometimes, but as a matter of policy checks are made on final tablists in all big tournaments.

The problem for TheVoid was that in a tournament of such size, PokerStars naturally got straight on the phone for a bit of an interview and to wrap the story, but when a person confirms their identity and then shows no idea whatsoever about the tournament, that can only lead to one thought, that being that players with the same IP are not the people listed, but in fact the same person.

TheV0id was stripped of his prize, and everyone was bumped up a spot. Whereas I do not condone what TheV0id did, he did however win the tournament based purely on ability, and on that aspect alone I feel sorry for the outcome. The one good thing to come of it is that it is a great warning to others players, and hopefully they can all learn from his lesson.

World Cup of Poker

PokerStars is currently hosting the World Cup of Poker, which is free to enter and has all the countries of the globe competing against one another. Which country will triumpth? Only time will tell.

Also forthcoming on Pokerstars is the annual World Championship of Online Poker, which features huge prizepools and gold bracelets for the winners

Bad Beat Jackpot for US customers

Within one day of releasing its new Bad Beat Jackpot game, Absolute Poker dished out nearly $78,000 to five lucky Absolute Poker players after the very first jackpot was hit.

Less than 48 hours later, it happened again. Christmas really had come early.

"When you can lose a hand and walk away with tens of thousands of dollars, it’s pretty amazing.” Said some bloke high up.

The first Bad Beat Jackpot was won early Saturday morning by CGA11 who lost quad tens to NEDKELLY’s straight flush. In traditional Texas Hold’em, CGA11 would have walked away from the table with nothing but a whole lot of anger. However, at a Bad Beat Jackpot table, when a player loses a hand holding four eights (8888) or anything better, they win the largest piece of the Bad Beat Jackpot. In CGA11’s case, that meant nearly $40,000 for his losing hand. All players who were seated at the table where the bad beat occurred also shared in the jackpot. Sounds pretty sweet to me.

History repeated itself early Monday morning when MARKM3451 lost four of a kind to WHITETAIL0’s king high straight flush, losing the hand but winning nearly $13,000 by hitting the jackpot.

Absolute Poker is the only online poker site open to U.S. players to feature Bad Beat Jackpot tables. If you want to give it a go, you get a 100% sign up bonus using this link 100% Link, Entering bonus code OAKTREE

Negreaun signs for PokerStars

Daniel Negreanu has signed for the PokerStars team and will be playing there under the ID 'Kid Poker'. PokerStars will also be hosting Negreanu's own poker tournaments such as his prodigy tournament, designed to find a promising young player for him to personally mentor.