The Worst Winner

For the best part of the last ten years, poker legend Daniel Negreanu has been documenting his annual WSOP grind through a series of daily vlogs. I have watched bits and pieces over the years but never really followed it fully. But this year, one of my friends was buying a piece of Dnegs world series action through the 'Pokerstake' site. A few of our poker grouped chipped in £50 each, having initially been sold the idea (by my friend) that a big win would equate to a five figure return for us. Alas, after a second look at the numbers, the decimal point moved a couple of places and actually it was highly unlikely we could win more the a couple of hundred pounds, realistically.  Unperturbed, I was invested and decided to follow along with Negreanu's world series vlogs for the summer. It's kind of amazing that not only does Daniel churn out these videos giving an real insight into the world of a top poker pro on a daily basis but also that he's been doing it for so lon...

I had a new favourite game: Badugi.  I discovered the game last year, and after playing just three tournaments, I came up with the following sticky note guide to Badugi to keep myself on the straight and narrow: You get dealt 4 cards, a 'badugi' is when you have one of each suit. The lower the cards the better. Pairs count against you. You get three rounds of drawing and betting. Got a badugi? BET BIG! Drawing to a good badugi? Try get there cheap. Someone else betting big? They have a badugi already. Don't waste chips chasing a poor draw. Obviously there's more to it than that but that was my initial strategic observations and seemed to be enough to make the money about half the time on the nightly pot limit badugi tournament on Pokerstars. It is almost the perfect tournament for me, since becoming a parent I'm very much time restricted in what poker I can play, but this tournament; begins around 9pm which is ideal, it gets 80-100 players meaning it finishes around...