Poker Going Mainstream Again?

The poker community is excited about a possible new hit series on mainstream television. Underground Poker, starring top poker stars @Antonio Esfandiari  and @Phil Laak aired last night on Discovery Channel as the closing show in a special block of programming on gambling titled 'All-In, All-Night'.

In this special, they head to New Orleans, home to some of the most coveted underground games in the nation, and use their connections to hone in on the action, whether it's at a luxurious loft on Bourbon Street or in the back room of a seedy, swamp-side dive. Down in the Big Easy, high stakes and danger preside with every raise and every call, and that's why it's exactly where Phil and Antonio want to be.

Esfandiari: "If we get the poker community behind us, we’ll have a show on Discovery for sure. Hopefully people will like it and won’t bash it too much.”

The pilot episode has received much positive attention in social media, which is hardly surprising since "Phil and Antonio know everybody who knows anybody in the poker world". Celebrities who have shared their excitement about poker going mainstream again include @Michael Phelps and @Daniel Negreanu :

Watch the trailer and support a future series on Twitter with the hasthag #undergroundpoker @Discovery:

UK Poker Legend Simon Aces Trumper Commentating WPT Cyprus

Watch the #WPTCyprus livestream with commentary from UK poker legend and Dusk Till Dawn live poker director, @Simon Trumper! He has bet on Ori Miler in the top two spots - see if he gets it right :)

Here are the five surviving players competing for the $310,000 1st prize in @World Poker Tour PartyPoker Merit Classic North Cyprus at @Merit Crystal Cove Hotel and Casino !

@Toby Lewis 

@Dmitry Gromov (RU ; 1979-09-04) 

@Nicolas Chouity 

@Arie Ori Miller 

@Alexandr Lakhov 

http://www.worldpokertour.com/Live_Updates/Live.aspx

http://www.rankinghero.com/en/festivals/9229/2014-partypoker-wpt-merit-classic.html

Wishing MadMarvin Rettenmaier 'the Time of his Life' and Lots of MAD Wins! Happy Birthday :)

Team PartyPoker's @Marvin Rettenmaier is one of the best-liked pros in poker and a famous party animal so he'll probably celebrate his 28th birthday in style! Best-known for his unique poker achievement - the back-to-back WPT titles in 2012, MadMarvin is also mad about music and always ready to take out his guitar for a song. Happy Birthday, Marvin and we wish you lots of MAD wins in the coming year of your life! 

France Poker Series champion Marvin Rettenmaier and EPT San Remo winner @Liv Boeree do The Time of My Life at Touch Music Karaoke, Barcelona:

Watch Marvin's roller-coaster heads-up battle with @Phillippe Ktorza at the WPT World Championship, @Bellagio in 2012:

PokerNews August, 2012 The Rise And Rise Of Marvin Rettenmaier; Back-To-Back World Poker Tour Champion

Back-to-Back November Niner Mark Newhouse Bio and Poker Profile

"Mark Newhouse you have achieved the impossible and you are a SUPERSTAR"; "ESPN have a national treasure on their watch and his story eclipses all that have gone before him"; "Mark Newhouse's World Series of Poker achievement is simply amazing". This is just a random sample of reactions in poker media and forum threads dedicated to Mark Newhouse's incredible accomplishment - making the single most important final table in poker in two consecutive years.

"@Mark Newhouse was born on March 11, 1985 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. After high school he went to the Appalachian State University in North Carolina. However, he only stayed for about a year and spent most of the second semester playing on PartyPoker.

Mark quit school to play full time - mainly online and cash games. His career in live tournament poker began in 2006 with the 37th Annual World Series of Poker. Mark Newhouse final tabled the very first tournament he played: Event 23, $3,000 Limit Texas Hold’em. He ultimately finished fifth for $56,470.

In September of the same year, Mark scored his biggest cash to date - $1,519,020 at the $10,000 buy-in WPT Borgata Poker Open:

The prize got him into the young poker millionaire club but it also marked the beginning of a darker period in his life. The Commerce Casino in Los Angeles became his home for a while and he played a lot of high-stakes cash games. Somehow he managed to blow through the money in about a year and then got into debt. ‘My head was not in the right place’ and ‘I was unconscious’, he says of that period in his life.

Yet he rode out this downswing to eventually regain control of himself and of his game:

“Right now I am a totally different person than I was then, and I am on the right track. I'm sort of in a rebuilding mode. I have made nearly every mistake you can make in this business and learned from all of them. I am doing my best to do the right things these days and things are going pretty well for me now. The road to rebuilding is a much longer and slower one than the road of destruction, but with a healthy lifestyle, a hard work ethic, a little discipline, and the experience of past mistakes my goals don't seem all that far away.”

Throughout the years Mark Newhouse has been a regular at the World Series of Poker Main Event. His big WSOP breakthrough came in 2013 when he made the November Nine for the first time:

Mark Newhouse was the first to leave the final table in November 2013. He was extremely disappointed but the ninth place came with a $733,224 prize which helped him get his finances in better shape.

“I would rather finish 10th than ninth. Ninth is brutal, man. As far as emotionally, I think that’s the worst place to finish in the tournament, with all the hype leading up to it and come back, and you’re out. So, anything but ninth.”

By advancing to the final table in the 2014 WSOP Main Event Mark Newhouse has made poker history as the first back-to-back November Niner ever since the format was introduced in 2008. Many poker pros and writers consider this the ultimate poker achievement even if Mark himself is shying away from the superlatives.

“It’s a huge accomplishment, but I’m not the type to say I’m great or whatever. Even though this year getting in is a bigger deal than it was last year, I was really just having fun the whole time. Just playing poker, not too much pressure, not thinking about it, and I made it.”

Check out Mark Newhouse's profile page on RankingHero for details about his live tournament performance since 2006!

Newhouse's favorite pre-FT profile, by ALL IN Magazine : 

World of Poker in Awe of Newhouse for Achieving Mission Impossible

Watch Newhouse in action:

2014 November Nine Moments - Full House Too Small for Newhouse

November Nine Moments: Mark Newhouse Strikes with 5's Again!

Sources and links:

PokerNews; The 2014 WSOP November Nine is Set; Newhouse Makes Back-to-Back Final Tables in Poker's Greatest Event

PokerNews: 2013 WSOP November Nine: Mark Newhouse

WSOP News: MARK'S NEW HOUSE OF DREAMS FOR 2014

LA ReviewJournal: Mark Newhouse will let others decide his place in poker history

Andrew Feldman ESPN podcast

2013 Podcast Bernard Lee Poker Show

2008 Life's A Bluff - Random Questions with Mark Newhouse

http://www.pocketfives.com/f20010/you-main-man-take-bow-mark-newhouse-694467/

 #RKHbio 

#WPTCyprus

Lee Davy sits down with the Season XII World Poker Tour (WPT) Cyprus runner-up, Albert Daher, to talk about his penchant for playing every pot, his life after his big win at the European Poker Tour (EPT) in Deauville, and life growing up in Beirut.

http://www.rankinghero.com/albert.daher

Sofia Lovgren and Sam Trickett Table Fellows on Day 3 of WPT Cyprus

Lovely @Sofia Lovgren is the only female in the #WPTCyprus Main Event remaining field of 79 players. They will be competing for the $310,000 first prize and total prize pool of $1,471,320. Sofia had the company of her boyfriend, SuperNova Elite @Luca Moschitta  and the two even played together at the same table on Day 2.

Sofia and Luca Moschitta on Day 2 :)

Roller coaster day at the poker tables in Cyprus.. Started day 2 with losing a big part of my stack to Luca with AK vs.QQ (he will now sleep on the sofa tonight ;)) Dropped down to 40k and later peaked at 190k.. Finished bagging 126k chips and avg is 150k. Can't wait to play day 3 tomorrow with 78/400 players left. GL me!

Now that Luca has left the tournament, Sofia is indeed the 'Lonely Lady'. This is hardly going to intimidate the experienced poker player and ambassador who is used to being one of few #womenINpoker and has learned to use it to her advantage.

Photos: PokerNews photo gallery

What is cause for worries, however, is the fact that she will be starting Day 3 with just below average chip stack on one of the toughest tables. Her table fellows include Everest ambassador @Sam Trickett, @Maxim Panyak (a regular on the EPT circuit with recent multiple cashes in Cyprus Poker Open), last year's runner-up in WPT Cyprus - @Albert Daher, and one of the biggest stacks at the end of Day2 - Stefan Schillhaber. The table number is 8 so maybe it will prove a lucky draw for the @888 Poker ambassador :)

RankingHero WPT Merit Classic page

Rising Stars Dominik Panka and Sofia Lovgren Nominated for Spirit of Poker Award

Sofia Lovgren Announces New Sponsorship Deal

Weekly RankingHero Highlights

In the past week on RankingHero, we invited you to have fun with PokerNews' Sarah Grant and Top Most Annoying Things Poker Players Say and Do, to study away from the tables with Phil Ivey, to compare the fantastic live poker careers of ElkY and Jason Mercier, and be amazed by Daniel Colman's absolutely unparallelled 2014 performance.

We've added two discussion pages: the #RKHreads where we hope you'll share interesting articles and comments about your favorite poker books; and a page to read about, watch and analyze the strategy and tactics of the  #ColmanPhenomenon.

We revisited the #NOCHOPSNOSWAPS debate: Top Four $1,000,000+ Cashes in EPT Barcelona Decided in Chop Deals.

And for those of you who are playing in the WCOOP: If Online Poker Is Your Religion, Here Are Your 10 Commandments and 7 Deadly Sins

Warm welcome to our new members @Clement Bonin @Pascal Junkar @Renaud Bachelet @Thierry Bassereau and @Derek Kenny to mention just a few. We look forward to your poker updates!

Many thanks to everyone posting on RankingHero and in particular to @Jason Matthieu - the champion of exports in Mission 6 of the RankingHero summer contests - and to @Christian Ontheroad, the champion of freerolls :)

Looking forward to congratulating the winner of the @Barriere Poker Tour Lille Buy-in in the Top 10 contest, and wishing you happy pokering and sharing on Facebook,  and on RankingHero,

Yours truly,

@Annie RKH

RankingHeroes Playing for BPT Lille Buy-In and Having Fun with Poker Player Rankings!

Once again, the RankingHero community is involved in a fun contest and the prize is just right for the poker maniacs that we all are - a  €570 buy-in to the @Barriere Poker Tour Lille in September! This time entrants are asked to come up with a Top 10 list of players (using the functionalities in place to export and publish their list) and to invite all members of the community to vote by liking their submissions on the #M6BPT page!

You can check out the busy hashtag page yourself (once there, switch your language settings to Francais or you won't see the posts by our French-speaking members!). Today I would like to share some of my personal favorites in this summer's Mission 6:

Number 1 @Pvbart and his Best Poker Hats ranking (note the author himself at number 10 :) Pvbart's Top 10 led to an inspired twitter exchange about other worthy candidates and I will soon follow up with a special 'poker headwear fashion' article :)

Number 2 @Olivier Thiry and Women and Men Working in the Shadow. Behind every great tournament player there's an army of tournament directors, floor managers, dealers, and poker association activists and it is their efforts that Olivier has chosen to highlight and honor!

Number 3 @Mumu and the Ten Is Not Enough list, dedicated to players whom we haven't seen enough of in 2014. A great choice of players and excellent & fun intro and arguments for each entry! Good luck, Mumu in the remaining 2 days!

May all of you get many likes over the weekend and thank you for the inspired Mission 6 posts! Don't forget you get a bonus each time you export your widget to another site or poker forum :)

Game-Changing Poker Strategy Books

#RKHreads

Here is a selection proposed by one of the most respected poker writers in the industry, @Nolan Dalla.  Please share your own shortlist and/or comment on the titles::

The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky (1994 edition)

Super/System: A Course in Power Poker by Doyle Brunson (1978)

Harrington on Hold’em, by Dan Harrington (2006)

Hold’em Poker by David Sklansky (1976)

Winning Low Limit Hold’em by Lee Jones (1994)

Winning Poker Systems by Norman Zadah (1973)

Hold’em Poker for Advanced Players by Mason Malmuth (1993 Edition)

Poker Essays by Mason Malmuth (1996)

The Body Language of Poker (a.k.a. The Book of Tells) by Mike Caro (1994 Edition)

Every Hand Revealed by Gus Hansen (2008)

to full article on PokerNews

Colman Now Best Tournament Poker Player in the World - WHAT is he doing right?

There has never been a poker year quite like @Daniel Colman's 2014. So far he has made $21,039,323, including four million+ cashes! So the question eveyone in the poker world is asking is HOW? How does he do it? We are fortunate enough to have most of his final tables on video and we can study and analyze (and hopefully learn from) his play!

This is a call to all poker coaches, writers, fans, and RankingHero members: watch the replays and try to uncover Colman's secret weapons. He MUST be doing something right! Share your analysis of his game and your favorite #PokerHand (s). Enjoy your study session and please don't keep any insights to yourself :)

SHRPO 10 M GTD Final Table :

EPT 11 Barcelona Super High Roller Final Table:

EPT 10 Grand Final Super High Roller:

WSOP 2014 Big One for One Drop:

RKH: 

The Monte-Carlo EPT Super High Roller - a Clash of Cultures, Generations, and Poker Styles

Second-Biggest Winner in Poker History Refuses to Promote the Game

Dan Colman Speaks Out on the 'Ugly World' of Poker, Daniel Negreanu Looks on the Brighter Side

Colman Continues Fantastic 2014 Run with Six-Figure Score at the Aria

The 15 Million Dollar Ten of Spades