It came to light recently that a player was awarded a pot with the worst hand, over at Cake Poker. The revelation was revealed on the 2+2 forums - where a player with a king high flush beat an ace high flush. While it was amusing that the first few posters on that thread didn’t even spot the winning hand, online poker software should spot it. We take it for granted that a poker site will award the pot to the best hand. These kinds of mistakes aren’t meant to happen, but as anyone with a computer will know - they do some strange things sometimes.

Software has bugs, and this was clearly a bug in their system. Such a mistake is obviously not great PR for an online poker room (”don’t play there; they don’t know what beats what!” etc). But depending on how you handle the situation, you can either turn it into a huge issue or limit the damage. Cake Poker should be applauded in the way they dealt with this situation. The poker room manager at Cake Poker, Lee Jones, quickly responded to say that it was indeed a genuine mistake, and a short time later came up with a detailed explanation - which is entirely plausible and while I’m no programmer, I’ve no reason to doubt them.

Compare this to Ultimate Bet, where a similar situation occurred. This involved none other than Phil Hellmuth, who won with the worst hand. How did they respond? Well, the opposite to Cake Poker. Of course that’s no surprise to anyone who knows anything about Ultimate Bet - a site with zero integrity and one that should be avoided at all costs (Google ‘Super User’ for more on them).

So, credit where credit is due. Well done Lee Jones. Well done Cake Poker!

If you haven’t heard, Phil Ivey finished 7th in the WSOP final. This was a huge disappointment to the vast majority of poker fans, including me. I wanted him to win it - yet it was always going to be a big ask. Firstly, he was short stacked. Does it matter if you’re Phil Ivey? Of course he has the skill to build up his stack, but we’re forgetting one more ingredient - luck.

Like many of you, I was following the coverage via various poker websites. It seems to me that this final was far more about luck than skill. The amount of suckouts was unreal. Whoever wins it this year (Moon or Cada at the time of typing) will have had huge slices of luck. Moon had it for days 1-8 and Cada for day 9. Who will get the rub of the green on day 10?

While I wanted Ivey to win, I’m now rooting for Moon, who is now the underdog. Yes he may be more lucky than good (he’s not terrible), but I like the guy - even though he knocked Ivey out. What I like most about him is his integrity. He said back in July that he wouldn’t accept a sponsorship deal from any online poker sites, and he stuck to his word. It’s quite refreshing to see, what with every other player at the table displaying logo’s of their “favorite” rooms.

Having said that, my head says Cada will win. Not because he’s probably got the better game, more chips, more energy, more desire, etc, etc - but because he’s sporting Poker Stars logos. That’s why he’ll probably win it. Poker Stars virtually own the WSOP, sending more players to the tournament that all other sites combined - and usually ending up with the winners. Maybe that’s where Ivey went wrong. Next year he should ditch Full Tilt and go with Poker Stars!

Remember the Durrrr Challenge? Yes, the challenge that was hyped up and talked about endlessly on poker blogs, poker websites, forums and communities. Yes you may have forgotten about it too, I know I did. But guess what? They’ve reached the half way stage. At the time of writing they’ve completed 25,145 of the 50K hands. Heck, it’s only taken 8 months (note: I could be wrong as am unsure exact start date - it was so long ago). Oh and Durrrr has taken the lead, and is now $700k up.

I’ve heard Antonious say recently that they’d like to speed things up a bit, and will be playing more regularly. He cites time zones as a major reason for it taking so long, but I don’t buy that. How hard is it to arrange a time to play? The internet didn’t just allow us to play online poker - it’s also provided us with clever communication tools like MSN messenger and Skype.And of course, there’s always email!

I’m not too bothered now anyway. But I do wish they’d hurry up, as I want to see the Durrrr Challenge II - Dwan vs Ivey. At this rate it looks like we might have to wait until 2011 for that one.

Phil Hellmuth made quite an entrance to this years WSOP Main Event. He came dressed as the former Roman emperor, Julius Caesar, surrounded by a string of beautiful women in white toga-like dresses, and rose pettles were thrown at his feet. It was ridiculous, absurd, and comical! He was clearly embarrassed by the publicity stunt - and if you missed it, here it is:

It’s unlike Phil Hellmuth to play up for the cameras (cough!), but he was here with a purpose. “I came here to conquer like Caesar!” said Hellmuth as he entered the Rio. “I’m here to win my 12th bracelet.” Well he didn’t really conquer did he…finishing 400th of somewhere (I’m not 100% on the exact placing). To be fair, he made the money, but I wonder how the models who accompanied him in his entrance took the news - “400th? I thought he was the emperor of poker”. Of course they probably don’t know about variance.

Phil got busted slow playing Aces, by just flat calling an early position raiser, and allowing two more players to see a flop. All his chips went into middle on the flop, when he was behind (see official WSOP site for more details) to two pair, then a straight. Basically he tried playing too cute and I often here professional poker players say the biggest mistake amatuers make is slow playing big hands. Well I can’t wait to see the ESPN WSOP shows, especially when Hellmuth gets his balls busted. Can’t wait!

The $10k Main Event kicks off today, over a month after the first WSOP event of this year’s series. I must admit that I’ve got a bit bored with the coverage and I believe there are far too many events – particularly hold’em events. Here’s a list of the hold’em events at this year’s WSOP, not including the main event:

No-Limit Hold’em (Event 4) $1,000
No-Limit Hold’em (Event 7) $1,500
No-Limit Hold’em (Event 9) $1,500
No-Limit Hold’em (Event 11) $2,000
No-Limit Hold’em (Event 13) $2,500
No-Limit Hold’em (Event 15) $5,000
No-Limit Hold’em (Event 19) $2,500
No-Limit Hold’em (Event 22) $1,500
No-Limit Hold’em (Event 24) $1,500
No-Limit Hold’em (Event 28) $1,500
No-Limit Hold’em (Event 32) $2,000
No-Limit Hold’em (Event 34) $1,500
No-Limit Hold’em (Event 36) $2,000
No-Limit Hold’em (Event 39) $1,500
No-Limit Hold’em (Event 41) $5,000
No-Limit Hold’em (Event 51) $1,500
No-Limit Hold’em (Event 52) $3,000
No-Limit Hold’em (Event 54) $1,500
No-Limit Hold’em (Event 56) $5,000

http://www.worldseriesofpoker.com/tourney/tourneydetails.asp?groupID=607

Note: One of these (event 52) is a triple chance, two are shootouts (22 & 41) and three are six handed max (9, 19, 56).

I know the lower buy-in events are very popular, but do we really need so many of them? Do we need them at all? Personally I think its ridiculous having so many WSOP hold’em events. It devalues the series, which should be more exclusive in my opinion. If it was like this in the 1970’s then Doyle Brunson would probably have a lot more than 10 WSOP Bracelets.

But anyway, now the warm ups have finished – it’s time for the BIG ONE! Good luck to all the players lucky enough to have a seat!