Jukka Orders 20 Beers, Busts 17th from Battle of Malta

The Dudeson’s Jukka certainly made the most of his time at the Battle of Malta.
For the last three days Jukka has been scooping pots, laughing it up with the players at his table and even tripping over marked cards chairs.
For his last act Jukka ordered 20 beers for everyone at his table and then promptly busted in 17th place.
Jukka made an ill-timed shove with 7♠ 6♠ and got snapped off by Sonny La who had A♣ Q♥.
Jukka has been making miracle hands throughout the tournament but his luck finally ran out as the board went:
J♣ 9♣ 2♠ 2♣ Q♣
The Dudeson’s stuntman looked a bit stunned but then got up and said, “Well that was fun. Thanks everybody.”
And with that the tight-wearing Finn exited the poker room leaving 20 beers behind.
He picks up €3,919 for coming in 17th place but misses out on the final table.
In other news Giovanni Ceraso busted in 18th place when Ambjorn Haga flopped a set of nines against his J-J.
We're down to 16.

Average Stack: 1,110,000

Players Left: 16

Tables Left: 2

Dinner Break, Ambjorn Haga Hunting BOM Title

We’ve reached the last dinner break of the 2013 Battle of Malta and marked cards players are out on a 60-minute dinner break.
Norwegian Ambjorn Haga re-took the chip lead over the last level and is once again crushing with 4.6 million.
The level wasn’t as kind to former chip leader Sonny La who dropped down to 1.6 million.
Here are the complete chip counts followed by bios for all our final table players:

• Ambjorn Haga – 4675000
• Lauri Pesonen – 3715000
• Louis Cartarius – 3000000
• Alessandro de Iaco – 2450000
• Konrad Abela – 1360000
• Sonny La – 1665000
• Arhur Popov – 910000

Average Stack：2,537,143

Players Left：7

Tables Left：1

Double-Ups For Everyone

Just as we entered 150,000/300,000 blind levels with a 10,000 ante, Louis Cartarius scored a massive double up.
Cartarius opened the pot for 600,000 and Ambjorn Haga decided to shove his massive stack in the middle.
Cartarius called and flipped marked cards over A♥ Q♥, which had Haga’s K-J dominated.
The rollercoaster board ran out K♥ 8♦ 7♥ 9♥ 4♣ and gave Haga a pair of kings on the flop but ultimately gave Cartarius the pot when he hit a flush on the turn.
Cartarius briefly took the chip lead but then doubled up Konrad Abela on the next hand, which gave Abela the chip lead and bumped Cartarius down to last.
It’s kill or be killed out there.
Here’s how it all shook down after the dustup.

• Konrad Abela – 7.1 million
• Ambjorn Haga – 5.7 million
• Louis Cartarius – 5.5 million

Average Stack: 5,920,000

Players Left: 3

Tables Left: 1

How to Determine the Winning Poker Hand

When playing poker with your family or friends, one of the things you're going to need to know is how to determine the winning hand in all scenarios.
Before we go any further, first you need to memorize or print out the order of poker hands.
Once you know that a flush beats a straight and three of a kind beats two pair, you're off to a good start.
The majority of marked cards poker hands are simple to determine a winner from.
If one player has a flush, and no one else has a flush or better, it doesn't take much thought to figure out who's the winner.
It's once things get a little bit more complicated that people start to get confused. First, you want to remember these rules of poker hands:

• You must make the best hand possible using exactly five cards
• All five cards are used in deciding the strength of the hand
• No cards outside of the best five have any bearing on the strength of the hand

If you're playing Texas Hold'em poker, players are allowed to use any combination of cards from their hand and/or the board cards.
This means if the absolute best five-card hand a player can make is by using the five cards on the board, then that is his or her final hand (this is known as playing the board).
Some Common Areas of Confusion
Here's a quick rundown of a couple common areas of confusion, and how to resolve the winner:
Two Players (or More) Have a Flush
If more than one player has a flush, you award the pot to the player with the highest flush. This includes all five cards, for example:
Board:
         
Player 1:
   
Player 2:
   
In this scenario, Player 1 wins the pot. The reason is that when you look at all five cards, Player 1 has the higher flush:
Player 1:
         
Player 2:
         
All the cards are the same, until the final fifth card. Since  7♦ is higher than 6♦, Player1 wins the entire pot.
If instead of the 2♠ on the board, that card was the T♦, both players would have the same flush (playing the board) and the pot would be split.
Two Players Have Two Pairs
When two players have two pairs, it can sometimes be confusing for people to know who won.
Take this example:
Board:
         
Player 1:
   
Player 2:
   
In this scenario, Player1 wins infrared contactlenses the entire pot. Two pair is always ranked by the value of the highest pair first, and only if that pair is the same for both players do you rank by the second pair.
If both of two pairs are identical, it will be the kicker that will decide the winner (the highest-value fifth card is the kicker).
In this scenario because the two paired on the river, Player 1 has two pair - A♦ A♣ 2♠ 2♣ with the kicker K♦.
Player 2 has the lower two pair - K♦ K♥ Q♠ Q♥ with the kicker 3♥. Aces are higher than kings, so Player 1 wins the entire pot.
Who Wins?
Board:
         
Player 1:
   
Player 2:
   
Take a second to figure it out. This is a very bad beat, as once the river falls both players now have four of a kind with nines.
Only Player 1, who up until this point had nothing special, has the highest kicker with an ace.
Even though Player 2 flopped a full house - K♠ K♣ K♦ 9♠ 9♣ - once the fourth nine fell, he was now playing four-of-a-kind nines with a king kicker.
Player 1 wins the whole pot.
The Omaha Rule
The rules in determining the best hand in Omaha are exactly the same as in Texas Hold'em with one additional rule:

• Every player must make the best five-card hand using exactly two cards from his hand (you're dealt four cards in Omaha) and three cards from the board.

This means that if there are four hearts on the board and you only have one in your hand you do not have a flush.
You must always use exactly two cards from your hand.

WSOP APAC Player to Watch: Kitty Kuo

If you're the kind of poker fan that keeps a close eye on worldwide tournament results, you'll likely recognize the name Kitty Kuo.
A fourth-place finish at WPT Malta last year. Twenty-eighth in the 2012 WSOPE Main Event. An impressive 17th at this year's Aussie Millions Main Event. Twenty-second at last month's EPT London.
Almost every tournament she plays lately it seems she makes a deep run ... but still falls just shy of the big payday.
We think that might change at the upcoming World Series of Poker Asia-Pacific.
Catching up with her at EPT London last month, PokerListings France's Fred Guillemot found out a bit more about the lady in pink - and how she got so good at tournament poker marked cards.
We often see you at the tournaments but we don't know much about you…
I don't normally give interviews, at least until I've won a big tournament.
You don't like interviews?
No, no, I do. But I want to wait until I win something big. I want people to know about me because of my achievements.
So how long have you been playing poker?
I lived in Macau for one year, and I lived in Las Vegas for three years. Now I'm back in Macau because of the restrictions and play cash games there. But most of the time I travel and play tournaments.
Would you say you're more of a tournament or cash game player?
I'd say I'm a tournament player 85% of the time. But most of the time I play online. But since cash games in Macau are very good, I play them when I don't have any tournament scheduled.
What's playing poker in China like?
Playing poker in China is amazing. If you play at $5/$10 or $10/$20, you can win 5 or 7 thousand dollars, it's very easy.
And since life in general is very cheap in Macau and the cash games are easy, all my friends live there. Not to mention that you can play online in Macau and not in the US.
I'd say that I spend 30% of my time in Macau, 20% in Las Vegas and 50% travelling.
How did you discover poker?
I was studying in Canada and went to Macau on vacation. I won a big tournament while I was there, a PokerStars tournament, and then I just kept on winning.
I played in Macau for one year. So I figured, oh well, maybe I can play poker for a living. I decided to finish school – I have a Master's degree – and then start playing and traveling the world.
What are your goals?
Here in London, I want to make it to Day 5 [ed. note: she finished 22nd and was last woman standing, just ahead of Annette Obrestad]. Otherwise, I always get unlucky at the end and finish third, fourth or fifth and I haven't won a big tournament – like an EPT or a WPT – yet. So I really want to win one.
What about the WSOP? Will you be there?
Yes. I will be in Melbourne for the WSOP APAC.
I went very deep at the Aussie Million Main Event, but I was playing infrared contactlenses against Phil Ivey and got really nervous and ended up busting in 17th place.
I really hope that this time I can go very deep but I tend to get very nervous when that happens and I have to play against very good players.
It's hard to miss you since you're always wearing bright pink. Is fashion important to you at the poker table?
Yeah, because last year I went to Malta for the WPT and I was lucky enough to get to the final table.
I was wearing pink then, so I decided wearing pink was my lucky charm!

Andrew Pantling: If I Didn't Find Poker, Poker Would Have Found Me

The name Andrew Pantling likely isn't very familiar to most casual poker fans.
Those in the know, though, see the name Pantling on their table draw - either Andrew or his brother Wes - and see a very, very tough out.
Both have long lists of big results both online and live with Andrew, among several impressive scores, finishing runner-up to Phil Laak for a bracelet at the 2010 WSOPE.
He's in the mix for another big score again at the 2013 EPT Grand Final with a massive 943,000-chip stack heading into Day 4, trailing only chip leaders Johnny Lodden and Steve O'Dwyer.
PokerListings Denmark reporter Thomas Hviid caught up with Pantling on the last break of the day to find out more about his boom-or-bust tourney style, his career in poker marked cards and his brother's experience at a now-infamous Partouche Poker Tour final table.
PokerListings.com: You're doing really well here in Monte Carlo this year. You also went deep here last year and the year before you won the 5k NLHE heads-up. Do you have a special relationship with Monte Carlo?
Andrew Pantling: Yes, I just feel really relaxed and comfortable in this poker room. I like Monte Carlo, the nice weather – in other places I don’t always feel that way.
I think that when I'm comfortable and feeling good I play better and get a bit more lucky. And that is the key, I have been lucky here.
PL: You have a bit of a boom-or-bust-style. What is your strategy for an event like this?
AP: I don't play a huge amount of tournaments and never really have. I don't even play much poker anymore.
Usually when I come to these tournaments I’m on business, so I tend to play an aggressive style where I either get eliminated on Day 1 and can get back to work or I go deep.
Fortunately, the latter has happened so far this tournament.
PL: You currently live in London and you used to live in Malta and Australia. How important is poker in your life at the moment?
AP: I used to play a lot of poker, but now I am working at Matchbook, a betting site, so I only get time to play a few tournaments a year.
I tend to go the ones where the big sports bettors are and also the ones I like, so I go to Australia and Monte Carlo and some local tournaments in the London area.
PL: Your brother Wesley is also a talented poker player. Is he also in London?
AP: My brother lives in the Far East, he is in Hong Kong and Macau most of the time. He is a very talented cash-game player and a bit younger than me, so he really loves poker and is doing really well.
PL: How did you guys start playing poker?
AP: We didn’t come from a poker family at all infrared contactlenses. My parents aren’t card players; my dad is a musician, my mom is an artist.
I like to say that “if I wouldn’t have found poker, poker would have found me." I was always inclined with math and gambling and I like to at least think that I have an edge when I gamble.
That's what drove me to poker and when the online poker boom happened I was there to be the beneficiary of that.
PL: Your brother was on the famous final table at the Partouche Poker Tour where two players were eventually caught cheating. Did any of you have any suspicion about that at the time?
AP: You know, it's funny. He might not want me to say this, but he probably wouldn’t mind.
The final table was delayed two or three months, which gave people time to prepare the cheating. Wesley went there to play, and I went there to sweat, and when he got knocked out, he came to me and said 'These two guys are working together. I can’t prove it, I don’t know what they are doing, but they are working together.
'Every break they were talking and whispering, they had awkward pauses, awkward stares. I don’t know how, but I think they are cheating.'
We had forgotten about it and a few years had passed, so when that video came out we weren’t totally surprised. But we can't be bitter about it.
It cost him a lot of money and a lot of equity, but he is a gracious kid and he has let it go and moved on to bigger and bigger things.
PL: You have made quite a few cashes at the WSOP, including a second place at the WSOPE. Are you going for a bracelet this year in Las Vegas?
AP: I don’t intend to play this year at all. We have my first son on the way, so I’m going to be home in Canada preparing for that.
I also don't feel as comfortable in Las Vegas as I do in Monte Carlo. The huge heat, the Rio isn’t the nicest place to play – I just don’t really enjoy myself. So I don’t see myself playing the WSOP in the foreseeable future.
It cost him a lot of money and a lot of equity, but he is a gracious kid and he has let it go and moved on to bigger and bigger things.
PL: You have made quite a few cashes at the WSOP, including a second place at the WSOPE. Are you going for a bracelet this year in Las Vegas?
AP: I don’t intend to play this year at all. We have my first son on the way, so I’m going to be home in Canada preparing for that.
I also don't feel as comfortable in Las Vegas as I do in Monte Carlo. The huge heat, the Rio isn’t the nicest place to play – I just don’t really enjoy myself. So I don’t see myself playing the WSOP in the foreseeable future.

Sam Trickett Victorious at Party Poker's Road to Old Trafford

Sam Trickett, the UK's leading all-time poker money winner, came out on top in Party Poker's inaugural Road to Old Trafford charity tournament this weekend.
An innovative new format introduced by Party Poker, this special tournament not only gave qualifiers the chance to play poker in the home of the Manchester United FC, but also watch Rio Ferdinand's testimonial match against Seville.
Trickett pocketed £10,000 for the win marked cards, a large part of which he reportedly donated to Ferdinand's Live the Dream Foundation.
“I am really happy to win this event,” said Trickett. “I played for fun but I felt I really had to win at Old Trafford – I made it my mission!”
With more than $19 million in career earnings Trickett certainly wasn't in this event for the money, but the die-hard Manchester United fan said coming to play poker at Old Trafford was something special.
“I am happy to make a contribution to Rio’s charity, it is a very worthy cause,” he said.
“This has been a great fun weekend and so much different and more relaxed than any other tournament I have played marked cards contactlenses. I am totally made up for winning at Old Trafford, it has been an amazing experience.”
Before playing poker Trickett was a semi-professional footballer himself, until an injury took him out of the game and set him on a course for pro poker.
Also in attendance for the tournament were football legends Bryan Robson, Dwight Yorke, Quinton Fortune and Norman Whiteside.
Robson, the longest-serving captain in Man U's history, felt the event was a smashing success.
“It seemed like everyone really enjoyed the event – Old Trafford really is a magical place,” said Robson.
“There was a great fun atmosphere and I was happy to be part of it.”

Poker Character

Spades J: Charles I 's attendants, the Danes Huo Kela
 Hearts J: Charles VII's court entourage La Haiya 
Plum J: King Arthur's famous knight Lancelot 
Square J: Charles I 's attendants Roland 
Spades Q: o A Xina Pallas , the ancient Greek mythology, the goddess of wisdom and war 
Hearts Q: Jules , German , wife of Charles I 
Plum Q: Britain's royal family of York Lancaster queen 
Square Q: is the "Bible o Old Testament " in the Joseph 's sister, Lai Keer Queen 
Spades K: David , 10th century BC King Solomon 's father, Israel , specializes in playing the harp 
Hearts K: Charles Ith , Frank King Shale Man 
Plum K: Alexander the Great Macedonian country
Square K: Chu Elias  Caesar, who Rome star general and politician,  become the dictator of Rome after the reunification.

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