September 30th, 2009 | 
Author: No-Limit Hold'em (NLH):
Of the 10 most prestigious poker tournaments today, six are NLH. There is a list of the 50 most prestigious events in poker in Appendix 3. The biggest two—the World Series of Poker (WSOP) and the Poker Million—each pay roughly $1.5 million for first place!
Imagine the scene in 2001 at the World Series of Poker when we were down to six players left in the tournament. I was still playing. The Travel Channel had a battery of cameras covering the table and the surrounding standing-room-only crowd. (Most of the crowd had to watch the action on television monitors set up throughout the room.) Two live Internet broadcasts were going on, one at my site (philhellmuth and one at Mark and Tina Napolitano's site (PokerPages). With a first-place prize of $1.5 million and $6,130,000 in tournament chips lying on the table, we engaged in some pretty spectacular clashes that day.
In one hand, I opened the pot for $90,000 on the button with J3-[V] (exactly the same two cards that I won the WSOP with in 1989!) and Phil Gordon moved all-in in the big blind for about $550,000 total. I called his $450,000 raise so quickly that I freaked out everyone at the table! I just knew that he was going to move all-in with a weak hand, and I was ready for him. It turned out that he had 6-6, which made me a 4!/2-to-l favorite to win the $1.1 million pot and bust him (I still had $500,000 in chips left if he won).
Unfortunately for me, the flop was 6-8-K, and his three sixes wound up winning the pot. If I had won this pot, then I would have had at least $1.6 million in chips and perhaps would have won my second "big one." My friend Andy, reading this book in draft, remarked that there's very little "perhaps" to it, although he was extraordinarily impressed with Dewey Tomko's play at the final table (Tomko finished second). Oh, well, either way, it was an exciting hand to be a part of! The two black nines lost the $1.1 million pot, but in 1989 they had held up for a $1.2 million pot and given me the WSOP title. So, 0-[V] is still my favorite hand, and I'd had a really good chance to immortalize it that day. Winning the most prestigious NLH event in the world is the best way to achieve poker immortality!
Online Casino Betting Vegas OnlineCasino En Ligne Bonus Jeu de casino en ligne gratuit
Tags: casino, poker, poker tournaments, pokerpages
Tags: 
In PLH you'll often be able to look at a flop, because the preflop raises are limited to the size of the pot. In fact, all bets are limited to the size of the pot. So, if the blinds are $l-$2, then the first raiser can only make it $7 to go: $1SB + $2BB + $2 call = $5 raise, so $2 call + $5 raise = $7 to go. (SB is small blind; BB is big blind.) If you've got $200 in front of you, wouldn't you like to take a $7 flop with a pocket pair?
If you hit a set, then you may get the other $193 into the pot when you're a huge favorite. Let's take this example further and suppose that someone did open for $7 and two players called the $7, one of them the big blind. How much can then be bet on the flop? Well, $7 from the raiser + $7 caller + $1SB + $7BB (caller) = $22. Suppose that the big blind bets out the maximum $22. How much can the original raiser make it? Well, $22 in the pot + $22BB pot-size bet + $22 pot-size call from the raiser (he has to count his own $22 call before he makes a raise) = $66. So the original raiser can call $22 and raise $66, making it a total of $88 to go. The betting can escalate quickly in PLH.
Some world-class players believe that there is more skill in PLH than in NLH because there is more play on the flop in PLH. I believe that it is very close, but I will say that playing flops takes a ton of skill. The way some players play NLH today, folding or betting it all before the flop—without ever taking a flop—does take some edge away from the more skilled Hold'em players.
Casino Gambling cartcasino.comBest Las Vegas Online Casino casinoforest.com
Tags: blind bets, poker, pot size, world class players