Having spoken to Michael, the landlord of the Waterloo Hotel, about this we have come to the decision that the final to be held on Sunday 29th August will be hosted at the Waterloo Hotel regardless of who wins in the upcoming final at Cedar Tavern.

Michael has assured me that he will look after the players well by putting some good grub in their stomachs which I know many of you have been dissapointed with on the last couple of occasions.

The rules will resort to how they were before when this event has finished. That is where the winning player will earn the right to host the final at his/her pub. But it can never be hosted at the same pub two months in a row.

If you have any comments you wish to raise regarding this please use the comment box below.

This is two weeks after the season ends. This is a one off and all future freerolls will return to being one week after the season ends.

Every effort has been made to alert everyone of this in good time.

If you read this and know of someone that may not be aware please can you pass on this information? That way we can minimise the chance of any inconvenience being caused.

Preference will be awarded to another player wishing to take the role of substitution who represents the same venue as the person who has been unable to attend.

If there are any further questions regarding this matter please use the contact form.

You can win this in a tournament or a ring game. Simply copy the details of the hand from your hand history and send it to us via our contact page. Once verified, tell us your address and we will send you one of our keyrings through the post.

This offer is to be extended into the pub finals and is limited to one keyring per person.

Play money and freerolls are excluded from this promotion.

The reason why you will receive this advice is because unfortunately for you, you are a human. Poker is a game of skill and unlike other gambling options such as sports betting or casino betting you can profit from playing poker in the long run. You may play professionally or recreationally but if you stick to playing your best game at all times you can and will make a profitable return and bankroll management is imperative if you wish to do this.

Why is adapting a bankroll management system important?

In the previous paragraph I wrote, “unfortunately for you, you are a human”. Now you might have been scratching your head at this but please allow me to explain via an example.

Imagine you are in a cash game with €100 in chips in front of you playing at blinds of €0.50/€1 . You hold on the button
There is one raise to €4 before you and knowing you have the best hand possible you re-raise it to €15.
The two blinds fold and the orginal raiser re-pops it to €40.
Your instinct here should be to push all in as you have the current nuts.

Now if you get called your chances of winning this hand are probably 80% If the other players holds then it will end in a tie 96% of the time. But 2% of the time you will actually lose the hand. My point here is that your hand although the well known strongest starting hand always has the possibility of being beaten.

Lets say for example that you don’t currently run a bankroll management system. Losing €100 is probably going to be hard to take if you get unlucky. You’ll feel really unlucky if you lose. You may then stop playing which isn’t good at all because you are forced to walk away from a game you know you can profit from.

Now lets say you have €500 that you have set aside to play poker and this same situation occurs. If you get unlucky and you lose that €100 that’s 20% of your entire bankroll that you’ve lost. That’s quite a hefty sum. Do you think that would affect you negatively? It would to me.

What is an amount that I could lose when I get unlucky and not feel negatively affected?

Losing is never fun, but it’s apart of the game of poker and there’s nothing you can do to change that. With a solid game and good discipline you can profit from this game and I would suggest that the maximum amount you should be buying in to with a game is 5% of your bankroll.

Let’s say you have €100 you want to play poker with like before. Instead of buying in for the maximum amount in a €0.50/€1 game you should only consider buying in to a game with a maximum buyin of €5 (5% of your €100). If you lose this it is only going to be a tiny nick into your wallet and should the situation come up where your get’s beat you wont be so emotionally dissapointed that you would not be able to continue playing your best game.

Think about this for a moment. It really makes a mental difference to you when you inevitably get unlucky.

The maximum buy-in to the lowest stake cash games at Fortune Poker is €0.02/€0.04 which carries a maximum buy-in of €4 and is therefore less than the 5% of our €100 bankroll.

When should I move up a level?

The next level is €0.05/€0.10 which requires a maximum buy-in of €10 so you should only look to move up to this level once your bankroll has reached €200. If you move up to this level and then find you lose a few games and your bankroll falls below €200 you should move back down to €0.02/€0.04 until you grind your way back to €200.

Following this rule can be one of the hardest things for a poker player to do as it requires really strong discipline. However, the types of players that don’t have this strong discipline are the types of players that go broke.

If you follow these rules you should never have to deposit again.

Let me know what you thought I should have done by commenting on this in the rate my play topic over on our forum. Should I have 3-bet the flop or should I have folded? What does the villain’s call on the turn mean?

I will reveal the results shortly.

0.25/0.50 Texas Hold’em (No Limit) – 06 March 2010 12:25:16
Table TH 2485 (Real/Cash Game)
Seat 7: fazekband1 (50.00)
Seat 10: pistolpoke (42.98)
Seat 1: kurati (35.76)
Seat 5: opotworek (31.43)
Seat 6: satir (48.75)
Seat 2: makezka (50.00)
Seat 3: moiss´e (48.50)
Seat 4: Küwi (36.00)
Seat 9: Blaker23 (51.25)
satir post SB 0.25
fazekband1 post BB 0.50
** Deal **
fazekband1 [N/A, N/A]
pistolpoke , ]
kurati [N/A, N/A]
opotworek [N/A, N/A]
satir [N/A, N/A]
makezka [N/A, N/A]
moiss´e [N/A, N/A]
Küwi [N/A, N/A]
Blaker23 [N/A, N/A]
*** Bet Round 1 ***
Blaker23 Fold
pistolpoke Raise to 2.00
kurati Fold
makezka Fold
moiss´e Fold
Küwi Fold
opotworek Call 2.00
satir Fold
fazekband1 Fold
*** Flop(Board): *** , , ]
*** Bet Round 2 ***
pistolpoke Bet 3.56
opotworek Raise to 7.12
pistolpoke Raise to 12.68
opotworek Call 12.68
*** Turn(Board): *** , , , ]
*** Bet Round 3 ***
pistolpoke All-in 28.30
opotworek All-in 16.75
*** River(Board): *** , , , , ]

First of all I considered many poker rooms before deciding on a suitable place to host our private tournaments. I read many reviews of many different rooms and spoke to the marketing managers directly about getting the best deal for our players.

Reviews

I had read numerous reviews on Fortune Poker and they were all saying the same thing. That it’s full of fish. Time and time again I was reading this. Here are just a couple of examples of the types I things I read:

“They have excellent support staff and their low stakes tables are full of fishy players.” FlopTurnRiver.com

“Fortune Poker is well known for their player base – and not for their incredible skill. There are plenty of fish here, meaning you can make your fortune playing whatever games you like most.” UltimatePokerSearch.com

Now when you are playing against your friends this doesn’t really factor in. But if you want to get some practice in before your games or whether you just fancy playing this is a fantastic factor for you guys. Assuming that you are looking to win money when you play, who’s better to play against then fish?

For those of you that don’t know what a fish is, it’s poker terminology for a weak player. As long as you are patient and are confident in your game, you’re going to be able to make money here. I tried it for myself and deposited £80.

Me playing at Fortune Poker

I started by depositing £80 which exchanged into €90. I have been playing here on and off over the last couple of weeks and have played many many hands. I have had swings up as high as €260 and as low as €0, which happened just last night on a hand where I got all the chips in as a 90% favourite. When I did go bust I had just completed enough raked hands to complete the first €10 bonus after 343 raked hands and about 1,500 actual hands. So my balance is currently €10.

In terms of the standard of play at these tables I can say that a steady poker player can find themselves profiting quite easily at these tables. I began by wagering a little wildly but once I started playing a steady game I saw my account balance rise steadily. The thing with No Limit is that the swings can take you up and down, which is the reason why it’s such an appealing game because being on that upswing is a great feeling.

Unfortunately I went on swings both ways. It’s great going up and frustrating when you go back down. I wasn’t implementing any bankroll management rules as I didn’t have the amount of funds to put 30x the full buyin at the level I wanted to play and I tend to play wrecklessly at the lower levels as I just don’t care about winning or losing a pittance. So I was gambling outside of my means with regards to bankroll management. But I didn’t invest enough money where if I lost it all it would matter. It would have been nice to end up in profit, but an £80 loss isn’t going to break the bank.

It is important to consider these things when you play and I would highly recommend to any player playing seriously with the intention of making a long term profit to employ a bank roll management system. I will write a further article explaining how to do this in the coming weeks. In a nutshell it assures you play at a level where you can employ your best game without risking your bankroll when the swings go against you.

I’d highly recommend any recreational or professional poker player to test out Fortune Poker because it is a game that players of only an average standard can profit.

Will I play again? … I’m playing right now

The Software

At first I wasted a bit of time trying to find a table with an empty seat. I have since learnt the best way to go about this is to scroll down to the tables at the stake you want and click the “join waiting list” button. Then I select 6 people as the minimum amount of players to join a table. As soon as a seat becomes available you will see a popup message that will ask you if you want to go to that table. Simply click “ok”

As with all online software you get prompted for your choice when it is your go. A sound prompts you but this can be turned off. Everything is very clear and it is easy to follow the pace of the game.

Depositing Your Money

Fortune Poker accept all major debit and credit cards such as Visa, Maestro, Solo and Mastercard. They also offer a number of ewallet solutions which can greatly increase the speed of your withdrawal requests to just 24 hours.

I use an online ewallet called moneybookers and as I already had some funds in there I chose to use moneybookers as my payment method to deposit into Fortune Poker. Moneybookers is a fantastic tool to have for anyone who chooses to gamble online. It is free and instant to deposit to most available gambling websites out there, and of course Fortune Poker is one of those.

The benefits of moneybookers as opposed to using your debit or credit card is that funds are usually returned much quicker than they are to your bank. I’ve withdrawn money and received it back in my moneybookers account within 24 hours about 90% of the time when using it on other accounts.

Withdrawing

I have tested this today and I will come back to continue this review at a later date. At time of writing it is 21:50 on Tuesday 16th February. When I first deposited I was sent a text message which is a security code to be used when it comes to withdrawing. I thought I would need this but it seems you only need this if you are withdrawing more than €500.

The cashier is very easy to navigate to and it all seems very easy and professional.

Update: Well that was very quick. I received an email at 14:31 on Wednesday 17th February saying the withdrawal request has been processed. I logged into moneybookers and it is sitting in my account. It took only 16 hours and 29 minutes from requesting the deposit before it was back available in my account.

Customer Support

Fortune Poker has customer support available by email, live chat and telephone 24/7. I decided to test their support so that I could write an honest review of how they rate for this article.

I rang their freephone customer support number on and told them that I was unable to login. They began by asking me for my email address which we had to use the phonetic alphabet to correctly verify it. A little frustrating because my email is long, but what alternatives are there?

I then told them I was struggling to login and I was told as this was an account security issue it would need to be carried out over email. I was told that an email would be sent out to me in about five minutes and I should reply to it answering the questions to confirm I am the account holder. This email arrived after about one minute.

I replied instantly and 27 minutes later I received an email detailing my username and instructions on how to follow their “lost password” procedure. I didn’t follow the procedure as I hadn’t forgotten my password. But I was very happy with a 27 minute response time and knowing they are available by phone in case of any emergencies is satisfying also.

I queried their live chat support team with two questions.

1. Where can I find my PIN number
2. Where can I find how many hands I have played

They answered 1 to my instantly and they forwarded me to an email address manager@fortunepoker.com for question 2.

All in all a very impressive customer service.

Rakeback

Fortune Poker offer 30% rake back to it’s players. The rake is the money the poker room takes from each pot. This is how online poker rooms make their money. At the end of each month you can have 30% of the rake you have paid credited back to your account.

If you would like to opt in to this please contact us to request it. We will not automatically set you on to this because you must clear at least €100 worth of rake in any given month to be awarded rake back and ‘frequent player points’ can be earnt and spent with no minimum requirements.

Bonuses

By default you will be set up to the 200% first deposit bonus up to €1,000. This bonus will be released in increments of €10 for every €50 worth of rake that you contribute. This is considered to be an industry average and will require many hours of play if you would like to clear it all.

But this is definately recommended! If you take poker seriously and would like to grow your bankroll. You will be playing at one of the fishiest poker rooms around so if you can deposit €500 and get €1,000 bonus then definately do. If you are able to clear it all, that €1,000 would be a welcome addition to your bankroll and if your a solid poker player you can easily profit from the other players here in the meantime whilst you are clearing the bonus.

Blackpool Season 10 Final Information

The final will be at The No 3, Devonshire Square on Sunday March 14th beginning at 6:30pm.

Food will be provided free of charge to all participating players. If you have any other queries regarding this please ask on our Forum and I’ll get right back to you.

A big congratulations to Eileen McGloughlin who has finished top of this season’s ‘all venues’ league with the highest score of any winner to date. Last season Chris Newby broke this record with an impressive 2,588. That score has been broken by two people this season. Husband and Wife Eddie and Eileen McGloughlin scored 2784 and 2880 respectively. Their scores were helped by playing across two separate leagues but their results are very impressive. Eileen has pipped Eddie into 2nd place once again.

Eileen will take the Pistol Poker card guard away with her at this season’s freeroll. Will Eddie have his revenge this time? There is a £10 bounty being put on Eileen’s head at this final so there is good reason for everybody to seek their revenge. Good luck Eileen! J

Invited Players

A big congratulations to the players listed below. I look forward to seeing you all.

For those of you who may be wondering why Deborah McCarron and John Kline have earnt themselves an invite to this final. Eddie and Eileen qualified in two different leagues. This leads to two substitution places being offered to the two highest scoring players from both those leagues. This is why Deborah and John have both qualified this time.

eileen m’loughlin
eddie m’loughlin
damian harrop
Jim Mangon
bob leslie
Gayner Foulds
kieron harrop
Lance Humphries
Kevin McKenna
alexander leslie
Michael Rowe
Chris Awde
David Park
Alice McKenzie
Mark Hignett
Steve Banks
darren brownsea
Lionel Norton
derek cook
Chris Topping
john bell
Martin Farker
paul burges
paul knapman
Deborah McCarron
John Kline
hazel odonnell
alex Mitchell
martin burke

New Online Poker League

I mentioned the launch of our new online poker league in last season’s newsletter. This league will be launching next week!! €110 will be awarded to winning players in a familiar set up to that running in the pub league. Gambling is compulsory in the online league with a €10 buy-in to our weekly tournaments. If you would like to get involved with our online league then you will need to follow the instructions on our join page. It’s quick and easy to join our online league and of course free to register. Simply visit our website to join now.

We are asking you your opinions on the night you would like to play in our online league. We have set up a poll asking you which night best suits you. We will go with the most popular evening. If you have not yet cast your vote you best be quick as voting will close at noon on Friday 12th March. Simply visit our forum, register your free account and cast your vote.

Don’t forget that we can create your own private poker league for just you and your friends as well. All you need to do this is have a minimum of five people that wish to play in your weekly league and decide upon a captain to be responsible for recording your results. This is made easy to do by using our website. Then all you need to do is have your captain register your team via our join page. This greatly increases your chances at qualifying for our freerolls and can be a lot more fun when you take your friends money each week.

Published on Website

This email has been sent out via email in the usual way but it has also been published on our website. We may eventually shift over to displaying all information via the website and simply send out emails telling people of the publishings. For the meantime though things will continue as per usual, but please bear in mind that there is lots of information displayed on the website already that has not been sent out via email. This is due to the latest upgrades so please remember to periodically check the Pistol Poker website and to register to the forum and blog so we can better keep in touch with you.

Kind regards
Darryll Lawton

There is to be no change at present. That is, when somebody wins, the next final will be offered to the venue that the winning player usually plays their weekly games at.

If the winning player usually plays at the venue that is hosting the current season, the next final will be offered to 2nd place.

This rule may be changed in the future, but as for now this is how the host will be decided.

After a couple of breaks and a number of knockouts we were down to the final six people and drawing closer to announcing our winners. Our six remaining players were Bob Leslie, Paul Knapman, Eileen McGlouchlin, John Kline, Eddie McGlouchlin and Michael Rowe.

Eileen was on a short stack and had pushed all in before the flop with an A2 against Paul’s AQ. The first card to come out was a 2 and Paul wasn’t able to improve his hand and doubled Eileen up.

John was the next player to go all in with a pair of 3′s. He was called by AT. Your typical coin flip situation, this time the board showed an ace and a ten to give two pair and saw John eliminated in 6th position.

Michael Rowe woke up with KK in his hand and was all in against AJ pre-flop. Although being a 70% favourite the ace hit the board and saw Michael out in 5th spot, missing out on a T-shirt as well as the chance of the £50 top prize.

Next to be eliminated was Paul Knapman. Paul pushed with Q6 with a short stack and was called by KK. A miracle was required, but it didn’t come, leaving us down to the final 3 with each person guaranteed to walk away with a cash prize.

Our final 3 were Bob Leslie, Eddie McGlouchlin and Eileen McGlouchlin. A rare case that each of these players were all from the same league at The Raikes. As per the new rules that were introduced last season this means that no matter who wins the next season would be held at The Raikes, but as The Raikes had recently closed and left the league the final will take place at the No 3, which is another pub that all three finalists have began playing at recently.

Bob Leslie crashed out next picking up £20 when his king high was beaten by a kicker and that left Husband and Wife Eddie and Eileen McGlouchlin to fight it out for 1st place. Eileen was bullying Eddie around with a couple of blind all-ins to which Eddie was folded.

The final hand was another blind all-in with Eileen holding J3 and Eddie holding 34. Jack high held up and saw £50 awarded to Eileen and £30 to Eddie. Eddie might have just gotten the last laugh though by suggesting at the end of the tournament that a bounty to be placed on the previous seasons winners head at the next freeroll. I really like this suggestion and we will be testing it out at the next freeroll at the No 3 on Sunday March 14th.

Next seasons prizes will be:
1. £50
2. £25
3. £15

With £10 to be awarded to the person that knocks out Eileen.

Good luck to everybody in the current season, I hope to see you at the next final.