Genius Poker

Poker Tracker & the Poker Tracker Guide

John Vorhaus often says that if you're not tracking your play, then you're not a serious poker player. This shouldn't be discouraging, since all you have to do to become a serious poker player is start keeping records. Poker Tracker is the preferred tool for this online by most poker players. It's a software program that tracks your play and the play of the other people at your table. (You have to feed the software your hand histories.) Having used the free version for quite a while, I can vouce for what a great program it is.

Another fan of Poker Tracker is fellow poker blogger, Iggy, who writes Guinness and Poker. Iggy and a colleague of his have written a 65 page guide to how to get the most out of your PokerTracker software, and this guide is called (appropriately enough) the Poker Tracker Guide. It's available for only $20. I'm going to give a very brief review of it here, and just say that it's excellent. If you're a beginning online poker player, this guide and the software combined will take your game to the next level.

In fact, it's probably going to take my game to the next level, and I've been playing poker online for almost two years now.

Busted Out in the WSOP

The following famous people have busted out of the World Series of Poker so far:

• Mimi Rogers
• Phil Gordon
• David Wiliams
• Evelyn Ng
• Tobey Maguire
• Men "The Master" Nguyen
• Erick Lindgren
• Antonio Esfandiari
• Daniel Negreanu
• Todd Brunson
• Kathy Liebert

And that's just for starters. More interesting tidbits from the 2005 WSOP yet to come.

Cooler than Rock Stars

USA Today ran a great article on the WSOP today, and the best quote from the piece is that being a poker player is "cooler than being a rock star". Now's the perfect time for such a statement, since we're approximately halfway into the biggest six weeks in poker. Most of the minor World Series of Poker events have now been completed, but the biggest event, the $10,000 buy-in No Limit event, doesn't begin for another week or so. But this year's big event is like no other, because it has so many players they even had to change the venue. The field is so large now that it's almost a virtual certainty that another unknown, like Chris Moneymaker or Greg Raymer, will take the big bracelet this year.

Celebrities playing in the 2005 WSOP include Shannon Elizabeth, James Wood, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Ed Norton. The World Series of Poker has become such a big event that bookmakers are taking bets on who's going to win, and I've even seen sites with Fantasy WSOP Leagues. I think that poker has become so popular because it's a sport that requires no athletic ability in order to play. I love it though. It's an exciting time to be a poker player. I wonder how long before we have Joan and Melissa Rivers hosting a WSOP Red Carpet special?