Each week, I try to figure out what will be the most interesting topic to write about. Usually, driving down the road or standing in the shower, I have a lot of ideas and start thinking about an outline for the article. I come across one key line of thought, usually a sideline of what I originally intended the topic to be. Around that particular thought, I am usually able to build out an ...

For the last four Fridays, PocketFives has brought you strategy content about Open Face Chinese Poker sponsored by a popular app that you can download here. This week, we wanted to talk about the growth of OFC with Joseph Michael and Martin Tyson of Open Face Chinese Poker App to see how they've capitalized on this up-and-coming game.

Last year, poker fans in the United States sat with fingers crossed hoping that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–Nev., pictured) and long-time poker foe Senator Jon Kyl (R–Ariz.) could work some magic and get a Federal bill passed that would legalize and regulate online poker. Not only did a bill not pass, it never got introduced, and the dreams of reviving the online game in the U.S. ...

You know the old saying, “You can’t keep a good man down”' Upon returning to Full Tilt Poker in November as one of “The Professionals,” Tom “durrrr” Dwan (pictured) immediately went into a deep slump at the virtual tables, losing what would be to most people ungodly sums of money over a couple of months. After a break, he came back swinging, righting the ship and earning $2.3 ...

I remember watching poker in 2010 and 2011 and hearing all of the talk about the old school players versus the new school internet players. Some of the differences talked about were how the old school players made good reads but might lack some knowledge with regards to EV and they would play out of position or flat a little too much. The new school players were more math-based and used EV and ...

“I can’t beat him,” He’s so lucky,” “How does he do it'” - you hear that kind of whining all the time. A player with sound fundamentals and an intuitive feel for the game can be a good player. The great players are the ones who have the ability to adapt to their opponents. Instead of spending time complaining about their opponents' good luck or their own misfortune, they figure ...

Last week, we reported that the Nevada Legislature would soon discuss a bill that would amend the state’s current law that legalizes and regulates intrastate online poker, expanding it to allow for interstate compacts. On Wednesday, two new bills, Assembly Bill 114 and Senate Bill 9, were introduced that would still aim to do this, but also add a few controversial wrinkles.

This week, U.K. poker player Chris moorman1 Moorman (pictured) extended his own record by capturing his 13th online poker Triple Crown. That's well ahead of the 10 belonging to Hungary's Belabacsi, who holds the second most overall. Moorman continues to be the most successful member of the PocketFives community in terms of cashes, as he is just a few dollars shy of $9 million in tracked in the ...

The decision in New Jersey last week in which Governor Chris Christie conditionally vetoed Assembly Bill 2578, the proposal for intrastate online gaming and poker, was met by the poker community with a great deal of enthusiasm. The hype was also displayed on various stock exchanges around the world.

“I just felt like variance is not wanted I want to experience.” Those were the words of Romāns RovoDice Voitovs (pictured), a Latvian player who was part of a five-way chop of the PokerStars Sunday Million last month for $122,000. One of his chopping partners was Casey bigdogpckt5s Jarzabek, who chopped the tournament in back-to-back weeks. There were over 7,300 entrants and nearly $1.5 ...

Sometimes, not having a Plan B can spell disaster. But, we're not into writing about disasters here on PocketFives. When it comes to player interviews, we're all about accomplishments. Recently, Russia's Aleksandr NoPlanB Mordvinov (pictured) was part of a heads-up chop of the PartyPoker $300,000 Guaranteed and walked away with $45,000. He plays on the world's third largest online poker room as ...

If you randomly stumbled across a quarter of a million dollars – say you found it on the side of a road in a garbage bag – you might be inclined to tell your boss off and move to the Caribbean. Okay, maybe you'd need a bit more than $250,000 for that, but for Israel's GadMO, not having to worry about paying bills in the near future is a reality after a $251,000 windfall in this year's ...

The strategical evolution of Open Face Chinese Poker (OFC) is still in its infancy, and that is where my game is as well. But, as I continue to play and think about the game, I am starting to get a better feel for and understanding of the game, although overall I feel like my OFC game is at about the level I was at in Hold'em when I was playing the $40 Limit Hold'em tourney on Paradise Poker ...

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (pictured) has conditionally vetoed a bill that would legalize and regulate intrastate online gambling within his state’s borders. Despite the word “veto,” however, this could be good for poker players, as it paves the road for his eventual signature.

“I feel great. It hasn't really hit me yet. Especially because of the tournament's structure, it doesn't feel real.” Those were the words of Canada's T.J. 1bigacehole Ulmer (pictured), who was part of a seven-way chop of the 2013 PokerStars Turbo Championship of Online Poker Main Event. The TCOOP's finale brought out a healthy field of over 5,000 entries, each of which cost $700. Over $3.3 ...

The Nevada Legislature returned from recess this week and according to an Associated Press report, policymakers will soon begin discussing a new bill that would expand Nevada’s online poker market to include other states.

On Tuesday, February 5 at 10:00pm ET, the PocketFives HogWild Poker League will return! Four games are on the docket for February and players from the United States and around the world are welcome to enter. There's no cost to play and we're once again offering a $500 prize pool, which is double what we offered each month in 2012. It's our way of trying to give a little bit back to our U.S. ...

For decades, gin was the game of choice for players waiting around for a card game to start. It could be played with just a couple of players, as a hand or game doesn’t take that long and is a great filler while waiting on enough players to get the poker game going. A few months back, all the rage about Open Face Chinese Poker (OFC) caught my attention. I did a little research on the rules, ...

On Thursday, Pokerfuse published an article linking Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV, pictured) to a seven-figure bribery scheme to push online poker legislation through Congress. As we all know by now, the Federal online poker push was a failure, but Pokerfuse and the Salt Lake City Tribune sourced a taped conversation between embattled online poker payment processor Jeremy Johnson and ...

One of the loose ends in the almost two-year-old Full Tilt Poker debacle is the fate of Chris Ferguson (pictured), who may be close to settling with the U.S. Government if recent events are any indication. The Government has been granted an extension to respond to Ferguson’s motion to dismiss the civil case against him, a possible indicator that a resolution may be within sight.

Over the weekend, the PokerStars Turbo Championship of Online Poker, or TCOOP, Main Event, brought out 5,060 players. Like all but one of them, Latvian PocketFiver kansis47 (pictured) busted from the $700 buy-in tournament, but rather than walk away from the tables, he turned around and bought into Event #50, a $215 No Limit Hold'em Hyper Turbo, and walked away with $65,000 for third place. Talk ...

Austria's SuchADegen (pictured), whose first name is Hannes, hit it big in the January 16 running of the PokerStars Sunday 500. In that tournament, he stared down fellow decorated PocketFiver Bryan bparis Paris heads-up and the two agreed on a chip chop that left $6,000 to play for. When the smoke cleared after holding down the lead when the deal was struck, Hannes brought home the gold and ...

Little by little, the traces of the old Full Tilt Poker are disappearing. On Monday, eGaming Review (eGR) reported that Full Tilt’s former marketing and technology arm, Pocket Kings, Ltd., would be placed into liquidation. Also coming to an end will be Rekop Ltd., the subsidiary through which Full Tilt was licensed in France until July 2011.

If you haven't heard by now, there's a new instructor at PocketFives Training, the industry's premier source for MTT instruction. John DrewPeacoq8 Gonzalez (pictured) has been added to the site's lineup of pros and took to Pokemon in his first video. The point was to help players classify opponents at the table, as Gonzalez argued to us in an exclusive interview, "The video contains what I think ...

In 2005, PocketFives was born. The brainchild of Cal Spears (pictured), Adam Small, and Riley Bryant, the site has since grown to include 120,000 registered members from across the world and features plenty of poker and sports chatter. Next Sunday, February 3, Cal will be headed to the Super Bowl in New Orleans after winning a $10,000 trip from DraftKings, a massive fantasy sports site.

Prior to my trip to the Bahamas for the PCA earlier this month, Open Face Chinese Poker (OFC) was just a series of words I'd heard a bunch of times in the forums and on Twitter. I finally caught the bug when I sat down to watch a few friends play live down there and it was suggested to me that I download the OFC iPhone app. I did, and ever since that moment I've been playing pretty much ...

Round 1 of the 2013 National Heads-Up Poker Championship is in the books. Twenty PocketFivers were invited to the made-for-TV tournament and, after the field had been trimmed from 64 players to 32, nine members of our community remain, including several heavy hitters. Round 2 matches will take place on Friday from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. You can catch the tournament starting in March on NBC.

I was reviewing a number of my WCOOP hand histories when I came across this hand. I thought it did a great job of illustrating when to not believe an opponent’s flop raise.

At the end of 2012, players in the United States were focused on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV, pictured), who was allegedly set to introduce a bill legalizing online poker, a bill that at the same time outlawed other forms of online gambling. When the smoke cleared, however, no bill was introduced and a bastion developed in opposition to the idea. So where did Reid's online poker ...

Just when many members of the online poker industry thought it was a forgone conclusion that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie would sign an intrastate internet gambling bill into law, he hopped on New Jersey 105's "Ask the Governor" radio program on Tuesday night and cast a world of doubt. Now, whether he'll sign the bill into law or veto it for a second time isn't clear.

Online poker payment processor Ira Rubin (pictured), one of 11 men indicted on Black Friday, plans to appeal his three-year prison sentence for a second time. PokerFuse has published a handwritten Notice of Appeal mailed by Rubin in late November from the Federal Correctional Institute in Miami to United States District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York indicating his ...

One of the major storylines of January in the online poker world has been the domination of Casey bigdogpckt5s Jarzabek (pictured), who chopped the PokerStars Sunday Million on January 13 and January 20 for over a quarter of a million dollars combined. After the back-to-back chops, he is now just a few thousand dollars shy of becoming the first PocketFiver of 2013 to reach $5 million in tracked ...

Yevgeniy Jovial Gent Timoshenko (pictured) is just $270,000 in online MTT cashes away from $5 million over the course of his career. He won the 2009 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker Main Event for $1.7 million (read our interview) and, several months earlier, he emerged victorious in the World Poker Tour Championship for $2.1 million. Later this month, he'll be one of 64 players to ...

The world of Bryan bparis Paris (pictured) is about to be turned upside down. Right before Black Friday, he proposed to his girlfriend, but the resulting shakeup of the online poker industry has left the couple still determining when they'll say their vows. The proposal story, according to Paris: "I went up to the diamond district in Los Angeles the day before her birthday and bought the ring ...

A former member of Team Full Tilt has returned to his old stomping grounds. Patrik Antonius (pictured), who has been involved in some of the largest pots in online poker history, has resurfaced at Full Tilt Poker, according to HighStakesDB. As the tracking site put it, complete with a screen capture of Antonius playing under his previous user name and avatar, "Patrik Antonius is back and so is ...

"I want it. I want it now." I am sure we have all had thoughts and feelings like this. I think it's common for people to have these feelings because when we want something, we want it right then. Unfortunately, not everything can be bought and acquired right at that moment. For example, improvement cannot be bought; it has to be earned. A person must put in the time and effort to improve.

Camped out in Playa del Carmen, Mexico is longtime PocketFives member Randal RandALLin Flowers (pictured). The champion of the World Poker Tour's Festa al Lago event in late 2010 and its Barcelona stop one year earlier, Flowers originally hails from North Carolina and saw his life turned upside down following Black Friday. Originally pursuing a live poker career, Flowers now makes a living ...

This is a scene right out of "Life of Pi." You look across the virtual poker table and stare down sammy_squid, better known on PocketFives as Sam TheSquid Grafton. Will the Brit ink you right out of the tournament or can you muster up the chops to send him packing' For Michael u shove i call Howard (pictured), Grafton was one of his chopping partners in the final PartyPoker $300,000 Guaranteed ...

This week, PokerStars pro Vanessa Selbst (pictured) took down the $25,000 High Roller event at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas. First place was worth $1.4 million, but perhaps more importantly, the score vaulted her into first place on the all-time female money list, passing Kathy Liebert. Selbst now sits with a hair over $7 million in lifetime tournament earnings, according to ...

One PocketFives member has made the 888 Poker Sunday Challenge his personal playground. He finished second in the tournament on the last weekend of 2012 before turning around and winning it just two weeks later in the first month of 2013. His name: Akira Ohyama (pictured), better known to you and me as Clutch Hero. The member of the Japanese poker community has been on an absolute tear in the ...

The $25,000 High Roller event final table begins at 1:00pm ET on Monday at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas. A stacked field of eight players remains, headlined by wildly successful online poker pro Shaun shaundeeb Deeb (pictured), who has 2.53 million in chips, nearly a million more than the second place stack of 1.62 million belonging to Vladimir Troyanovsky.

The final PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up of 2012 saw 3,446 players turn out. Nearly $700,000 in real money was on the line and the un-chopped final table saw inwooke come away with the win and pocket $108,000. Taking third place for about half that amount was Turkish PocketFives member Ozgur phaplap Arda (pictured), who logged his first five-figure score on PokerStars, where he's booked nearly ...

One of the highlights of 2012 was Greg Merson winning his second bracelet in the World Series of Poker Main Event. The lone dual bracelet winner of 2012, Merson also captured the WSOP's Player of the Year title and banked $8.5 million following a marathon three-handed session. Merson's story is inspiring and PocketFives caught up with him to recap the year that was and look forward to 2013.

You'll recall a recent feature article on PocketFives where we talked about the introduction of Multi-Prize Pool Poker at Dusk Till Dawn in the U.K. The brainchild of Roberto Romanello, Multi-Prize Pool poker puts a unique twist on the game by offering three different prize pools that players can buy into.

In mid-2006, PocketFivers in the U.S. watched as discussion of internet gambling and online poker took place on Capitol Hill, which included the infamous line, "Click your mouse and lose your house." At the time, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was just months away from being signed into law and the industry would be turned upside down forever. In Poland, according to recent ...

It's not easy to make a living playing poker, especially for high-stakes. Sure, you are your own boss, make your own hours, and have loads of options on where to live, but the uncertainty and the swings can be incredibly stressful. When things are rolling though, what a life it can be. Right now, a player we can all envy is Viktor Isildur1 Blom (pictured), who just a week into 2013 is having one ...

It's not every day that a decorated Olympian enters a major poker tournament. It's even less common that said Olympian dominates his competition on the felts. For 27-year-old Michael Phelps (pictured), the most successful Olympian in history with 18 gold medals, it's just another day at the office. Phelps, who retired from competitive swimming following the 2012 Olympics, has taken his passion ...

Just 400 PLB Points separated the top two finishers in our 2012 Yearly PLB race. When the smoke cleared on the 366-day stanza, Matt ch0ppy Kay (pictured) edged out Griffin Flush_Entity Benger for the title and amassed 17,856.55 points. Benger finished with 17,442.22 points and the two Canucks were the lone members of the PocketFives community to pass 17,000.

The very first PocketFives HogWild League game of 2013 will kick off on Tuesday, January 8. U.S. players are welcome to enter and there's no cost to play. In the past, we have offered up $250 in prizes each month for our HogWild Poker League, but in January, we're upping the ante to $500. Game on. Sign up for HogWild here to be registered for the League automatically.

Hi. I want to tell you about my first live trip. First of all, it was a great trip and I really hope people will enjoy the read.