ALL THE Aces

HIGH ROLLING

If you had a spare € 111,111 lying around, you could have used it to enter WSOPE Event #10 today, the € 10,000,000 guaranteed ‘High Roller for One Drop No-Limit Hold’em’. On the other hand, 1,342 miles south of Rozvadov, in Portomaso, Day 1A of the popular ‘PokerListings Battle of Malta’ Main Event gets underway for a far more attainable € 500+€50!

TIME FOR THIEVING

There are times in a tournament when the deck and the dealer seem to take a malevolent dislike to you and feed you a constant supply of hole card detritus. It’s called going card dead. But all is not lost because there are ways to chip up even when your cards look like they’ve been pulled from the wardrobe department of a post-apocalyptic movie (rags you see). Two nefarious ways to accumulate chips involve stealing or re-stealing.

PURLOINING POTS

Stealing usually involves raising with a weak hand from a late position with the sole intention of winning the blinds and antes.

Re-stealing is when you identify a player who you suspect of stealing too frequently and re-raise him with nothing from the button or the blinds. In the early stages of a tournament, when players are deep stacked, you are more likely to get called whether stealing or re-stealing – so this strategy is best reserved for later in the tournament when ‘crime’ pays.