All of a sudden players, dealers, reporters and cameramen all dispersed quickly from the main poker room floor, panic ensued and quite a few people were injured in the rush. Four to six people attacked the poker desk in the foyer, they were armed with what witnesses say were heavy machine guns.

Further reports are suggesting that a machete was also used by the robbers and that 3 shots were fired, although no person was hit by a bullet. It is estimated that only 800,000 Euros of the 5 million was stolen.

The organisers are trying to re establish the game, however, as you can see from the video footage above and below, it will be a difficult job. There are chips everywhere, so it will take some very good video footage to be able to ascertain exactly each players standing at the time. Hopefully the tournament director had just done a chip count.

A 30 year old Pub landlord from Ormskirk won the Walsall event of the GUKPT this weekend just gone. He amassed all chips from a total of 206 players winning a cool £57,700 first prize in the £1,000 NL Hold’em tournament. Colin McTaggart knocked out Bolton poker expert Alli Mallu in 3rd place, the Belfast born player faced Birmingham’s Anthony Crotty heads up for the title. 15-minutes in to the heads up and it was all over.The winning hand saw McTaggart faced with a big decision after Crotty re-raised the river all in on a dangerous paired and flushing board of 8-J-T-Q-T. After several minutes of agonising he made the call and showed A-K for a straight. Crotty had just K-Q.

McTaggart qualified to play in the tournament by winning an online freeroll on Blue Square Poker, he commented afterwards:

“It had been my goal to play in a GUKPT main event this year and I was delighted to have won my way in via the AWOP Players’ Club. It is a dream to have gone on to claim the win. All it has cost me is £30 in petrol money.”

He now has a seat to look forward to in the £150,000 Champion of Champions tournament.

The Walsall tournament was one of the toughest fields ever assembled in the four years that the tour has been running. With 23 players left, over half of them had previously been on GUKPT final tables and there were no less than seven former winners still in contention.

The final table featured two previous GUKPT winners. 2007 Grand Final victor Mike Ellis finished in 4th place while 2009 Champion of Champions Haitao (Colin) Wu exited 7th. 19-year-old Thomas MacDonald, who went into the final as the chip leader finished in 5th place while Darren Hickman from Wolverhampton was 6th. Stockport bookie Mike Hill, competing in his third GUKPT final table exited in 8th and 20-year-old James Mitchell, who was the overnight chip leader on the first day of the tournament finished in 9th place. Margate’s Karl Limbert completed the final table line up, departing in 10th place. Recent double winner Priyan de Mel just missed out on a third consecutive final table, departing in 11th place. Several other previous main event winners also narrowly missed out on the final. Karl Mahrenholz was 14th, Praz Bansi was 16th while former Eastender Michael Greco departed in 18th.

The tour now heads south to London, where the Grosvenor Victoria Casino will play host to Leg 3, which takes place from 18th – 28th March. The buy-in for the main event at the London festival will be larger than usual, costing £1,500 to play. Last year just under 400 players took part in the London main event, which was won by Ireland’s Martin Silke. This year’s main event starts on Thursday 25th March and on Tuesday 16th there is a 10-seat guaranteed super satellite at the Edgware Rd casino.

However, the tour continues online at www.bluesqpoker.com at 8pm on Monday 1st March, when the second of the 10% Online Series tournaments takes place. The winner of this £100 online event will also claim a seat in the end-of-year £150,000 Champion of Champions tournament.

Place – Player – Prize – GUKPT Ranking Points
1st – Colin McTaggart – £57,700 – 125
2nd – Anthony Crotty – £39,150 – 100
3rd – Alli Mallu – £25,250 – 80
4th – Mike Ellis – £14,950 – 65
5th – Thomas MacDonald – £11,350 – 55
6th – Darren Hickman – £9,250 – 45
7th – Haitao Wu – £7,200 – 35
8th – Mike Hill – £5,650 – 25
9th – James Mitchell – £4,100 – 20
10th – Karl Limbert – £3,600 – 15

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Nobody seems to like fixed limit Holdem these days. Rookies are all attracted by the excitement of NL Holdem, and seasoned players who have only occasionally given the FL tables a shot, don’t care much about the game. Just take a look at the comments section of an article written about FL Holdem. You’ll see people calling it all sorts of names and generally “hating on it”, mostly based on their false beliefs and myths. One re-occurring hater-argument is the one about the A,A, K,K suck-outs. Apparently, people think that dominant starting hands like pocket rockets lose value in FL Poker because of the inability of the player to protect his starting hand through a proper-size raise. Because he has his hands tied by the betting structure, the player can only watch all the other guys call his raise and go on to crack his rockets.

While this schooling phenomenon is indeed real, and while pocket rockets do indeed get cracked more times than they come through, stuffing the pot on them is still a mathematically correct decision. Here’s why. If you pick up a pair of Aces at a 10-handed FL Holdem table, and your opponents get K,K, Q,Q, A,K, suited connectors and suited one-gappers, the odds for winning will be around 28% for your rockets. That is by far the best at the table, but this selection of hands you’re going up against is obviously much better than a random one. For a random selection of your opponents’ hands, the odds on your A,A go up to about 31% (remember, it’s a 10-handed table we’re talking about). What that means is that you win once in every three tries with your rockets. That fits perfectly into the picture of A,A suck-outs, but there’s one more little thing: the one time you win, you’re likely to score a profit not only big enough to cover your previous two losses, but big enough to leave you with quite some money on the side too.

Here’s an illustration of what happens. Suppose you commit 10 units of money on your A,A every time (that’s the max you can stuff into the pot). The first two times you lose: you drop 20 units. The third time you win and you pocket 90 units (10 from each of the other players). That leaves you with a 90-20=70 unit profit at the end of it all, and that’s not even close to bad. So is it worth to stuff the pot on pocket rockets in FL Holdem? It most definitely is.

You may argue that as the number of players at your table decreases, so will your potential winnings on the hands that do hold up. That is correct. With only 3 other players at your table, you’d lose 20 units the first two times, and you’d only win 30 units the third time, which would give you a meager profit of 10 units. The problem is, that with only 3 other starting hands going up against your rockets, the odds on them would increase to about 64%, which means you would win 2 of every 3 such confrontations. That restores your profit rate right away.

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Have you got what it takes to beat that pesky Sonic???

Razz is actually the most popular lowball poker game available at Pokerstars. During peak hours you can find upwards of 40 ring games running with blinds ranging for just 4c/8c to $30/$60. The higher stakes games don’t always run but sometimes there is action above the $30/$60 level at $100/$200, usually only when members of Team Pokerstars are online and looking for a game. All Razz cash games are spread in the fixed limit format at Pokerstars.

Tournament players will also find the best Razz poker games online at Pokerstars. They run a nightly $500 guaranteed tournament for the lower stakes players which has an $11 buy in as well as $10,000 guaranteed weekly tournament which has a $215 buy in and usually attracts about 80 – 100 runners. Sit and go action takes place mainly at the heads up Razz tables which run on a regular basis from the $1 right up to $50 levels.

Other places to play Razz online include the Merge Poker Network and Ipoker. Merge were actually the first to spread Razz online but since then there player numbers have dropped dramatically and as a result the Razz tables virtually never get going. Ipoker have just added Razz to their offerings but it doesn’t seem to be taking off like it has at Pokerstars. Who knows what might happen in the future as Ipoker do have a large player pool but at the moment there really isn’t much online Razz action across their network.

Full Tilt Poker is pretty much the only other place you should consider when looking for somewhere to play Razz online. Their Razz cash tables do see a decent amount of traffic but their tournaments don’t really compare to what Pokerstars have on offer. They do have a daily $2,000 guaranteed but this has a $26 buy in which seems a little steep. Their weekly offering is a $5,000 granted Razz tournament with a $75 buy in which is actually pretty good value. If you are someone who likes to play the higher stakes Razz tournaments then you’d be better off having an account at both Pokerstars and Full Tilt. If you’re a cash game player then Pokerstars is the better choice as there is much more traffic throughout the day.

For a complete guide to Razz poker strategy, rules, tips and information about where to play online check out this Razz poker rules website.