photos and text: DAAguilar

First, we’d like to thank Asia.pokernews.com for providing superb updates during the tournament as well as the people from PilipinasPoker.com World Gaming Magazine and Pokerstars blog.

It all comes down to desire at Day 3 of the Pagcor Chairman’s cup.  All 52 are guaranteed money from the pot.  Skill, discipline, patience and hunger will be at play.  Yesterday’s runaway train Marc Rivera comes in with a lot of momentum with his 500 grand stack yet all qualifiers stand a good shot at winning the top prize. 

The steady Gordon Huntly leads the pack after day 3.  The leader of day 1B was a man on a mission today leading the cast of the final table.  Kirby Te, the only Pinoy left of over 240 listed, follows him at 2nd place of the chip count.

The finals move on to the SMX Convention centre as a highlight for the opening of this year’s Asian Gaming Entertainment plus leisure Manila Expo.  Now on it’s 5th year, the expo is known to feature the latest trends and strategies in gaming.  It will also be the stage where the 1st PAGCOR Chairman Efraim C. Genuino International Poker Tournament Cahmpion will be crowned.

For more info about the Asia’s GEM, click here

Updates and highlights from Day 3 of the Pagcor Chairman’s cup via Asia-pokernews.com can be found here

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by: DAAguilar

Ian Fellows dubbed his creation Fell Omen 2. A play with words but with far more significant/sinister meaning, Fellowmen, along with the ominous consequences such creation may entail. Ian Fellows was not the first in the field to come up with a Poker Frankenstein, but he’s one of the first to open the floodgates of possibilities, even beyond the sport.

The endeavour has been compared in parallel to the chess prodigy project, Deep Blue. It was news then, a computer that can interpret chess moves and tactics and counter it with its own logical calculations. Gary Kasparov, king of the chess hill tested it. The man beat the machine the first time they met. Then Deep Blue beat Kasparov in 1997 with 1 game, 3.5 to 2.5. It was a great moment for science and technology when it exploded, but it didn’t have a lingering afterglow. The consequences of a tool that can be both beneficial and dangerous like fire is seductive or paranoia inducing, since we are entering a world where technology can detect patterns and catch us where we’re going. Practical applications where it can be incorporated are something that we have embraced. Like when search engines suggest what we want to search for as we type it in. Many then toyed with the idea of smart homes, smart cars, and smart appliances all for our convenience. Machines in turn, become smarter than most humans because they can understand and predict where we want to be while we, the average man, can barely understand them and its schematics. With a pokerbot, perfecting the algorithm that can detect bluffs and read tells, the possibilities are endless. Imagine, a machine that can tell a man’s sincerity? We’d have more convincing political debates that way!

With poker in full bloom over the last decade, it’s but natural for technology to come in. Like chess, it challenges you to know where you’re opponent is taking you while he reads the many possibilities of where you’re taking him. All the information is on the table and out on the board. With poker, the war is won with the information and the misinformation that you lay on the table. This is what makes it harder to deduce. That’s why those who pledge by the efficiency of a poker bot says that they broke-in their bots with a good number of games (about 2500 games)for them to reap the dividends of their investment. But that’s a very long rope to pull to get to a point where one starts to earn 2 US$/hour. You can’t really get greedy with it because it’s like tagging a red flag on your bot. And it’s not cost efficient to use multiple cards and identities just so you can hawk out a decent amount. This is the reasons why major on-line poker rooms belittle its supposed unfair advantage. But despite that, some sectors believe that a rough estimate that 1 out of 12 player, on average, that play on an online poker room are poker bots. (continue reading…)

by: DAAguilar

Poker is a sport…

Declared by Russia in 2007, the first and only known country to do so,  it was retracted at the latter half of last year due to regulation problems.  Meaning, those who ran casinos in Russia went on ahead and exploited this ruling and built a number of game rooms beyond what the government wanted.  They wanted it concentrated on 4 specific places , their version of Las Vegas and Atlantic city (only it’s in Russia, of course).

Poker, was not at fault, but rather the rules that governed it and the ramifications of a popular sport being exploited unregulated by those who want to profit from it.  It’s no different from the mushroomed billiard halls of the late 90s and early 2000 when Efren “Bata” Reyes popularized the game of 9-ball and billiards as a whole.  No different from the streets that became makeshift basketball courts during weekends when PBA’s popularity exploded.  Locally, it’s been likened to “Lechon Manok” phenomenon, whenever products like this hits a frenzied popularity, where everybody wants a piece of the pie, or “Shawarma “ or designer coffee, or cellphone repair shops or lotto outlets or whatever pop culture fever hits the populace.

Longevity is its true test.  How it survives the test of time.  Darwinian on some levels, “survival of the fittest”, to prove its mettle.  Poker by definition, not just by popularity or its current marketability, fits well to what “sport” means.  Webster defined it as:

(1)  physical activity engaged in for pleasure (2) : a particular activity (as an athletic game) so engaged in

I’m sure they didn’t have Poker in mind.  Since poker then was too busy battling out its reputation amidst sharks and cheats in its shady riverboat history in the USA.  The material is available around the web and will survive even after the Hollywood bump that made the game go mainstream.  Its history is as rich as any other sport not unlike UNO or Monopoly. (continue reading…)