Merry Christmas to everybody! Another year is almost over, and a year that marked a lot of firsts in the poker world for our country is about to end.

May 2006 be a fruitful year for everyone! Merry Christmas!

Yesterday's tournament was arguably the biggest and the best tournament ever to be held on our shores today. 115 players, P575,000 prize pot, a pool of world-class (and not so world class players) players, both from here and abroad, and of course the fact that it was held at the biggest and most prestigious casino in the country.

Players like WSOP bracelet winner Isaac "The General" Galazan and his friends like Robert Karian, Avi, Ira, Benny, and other world class poker players came to play, along with our local poker groups and clubs like Poker Club of the Philippines, JGPT, Camp Hold'em, A55 pokuh, the BBC crew (the last three representing team Fututrebet) and many more poker players from all over.

You could feel the excitement and energy in the atmosphere. All the Casino bosses were very very excited and even stood around for the duration of the entire 8-9 hour tournament, enjoying the action. Food and drinks were free-flowing after dinner too!

Congrats to all those who made it ITM, and the last Futurebet shirt-wearing player in the field, Checkpoint Louie, who hung on and outlasted 103 other players. The winner Benny (sorry i dunno the last name) , a very very good poker player and a friend of our poker buddy Mishca Peters, won the whopping P172,500 first prize and the beautiful silver commemorative chip.

As for me, this was no question my worst tournament ever hehe! i played a total of three hands, never won one, and got taken out on the second level! 4-5 suited, A-Q offsuit, and the ill-fated Q-J offsuit that hit the nut straight on the flop, and my opponent pushed my small stack all-in, so i naturally happily called thinking i'd double up, but it turned out he was holding suited trash and hit his flush on the turn. damn. good thing i was on freeroll! and after that, i won a grand in the slot machines hehe!

Of course, congratulations to the man who made all this happen, our very own "gambling lord", the man who logged in the countless hours training dealers and enlightening casino bosses about the beauty of the game we love, and also of course gave us our freeroll (and future freerolls?) , and gave up a lot of things to make our poker dreams a reality. Boss Nick, hats off to you. Awesome job!

i recently read a very interesting article from cardplayer magazine.

If you and i each get to choose one hold'em hand among 4s-4c, Jh-10h, or As-Kc to be all-in with before the flop, i will let you choose first every time, and i will be the one with the advantage every single time!

Now, it is common knowledge that any pair beats two over cards by a few perecentage points right? so if you choose the pocket fours, you would be ahead every time right? that's what you think my friend.

AND, you would be surprised at which hand wins pre-flop if the three hands were to go all in against each other!

What do you think? which hand would you pick pre-flop? which one do you think is ahead?

Oh one more tidbit of information, in hold'em, ALL straights will either have a 10 or a 5, but there is ONE straight that you cant make when you hold 10-5, the nine-high straight.

till next time..

What a year.

I almost can't believe it's going to be 2006 in a few weeks.

You could say that 2005 was the year of Poker for the Philippines. From infancy to maturity, from humble beginnings to fame and fortune, everything happened in a span of a dozen months.You could say we fast-forwarded our progress in poker, and what took years in the US to develop is happening here in months.

Just imagining what's in store for us in 2006 gives me goosebumps.

To the guys and girls who made all this happen, why don't we have a little get together? On decemeber 17, let's all meet at the final table in The Airport Casino Tournament. It's time to represent and end the year with a bang. What do you think? Will you be there? Please confirm. Thanks! See you there!

hehe.

it has been exactly one week since i last played the game.

the truth is, i miss it, but not as much as i thought i would. maybe because i was on a downswing for about a couple of weeks and the last hand i played was a really bad beat that cost me about a 4K pot. i really want to play, but only with the regular crew and maybe a good old single table SNG. but i'm keeping myself pre-occupied with other things while i'm not playing, so i'm not really "looking" for a game. maybe i'm burned out? maybe the recent events has also contributed to these feelings too. hmmm...

right now my mind is focusing on the big event on the 17th. i know it's still a couple of weeks to go, but wouldnt that be a nice little christmas present if you can bag that one? dang.

what do you do when youre not playing poker? what keeps you busy?