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Free Pocker Satellites

February 10, 2006

Partypocker invited anybody-can-win hold 'em free pocker satellite tournaments are all the rage, from sit-and-go tables to big buy-in events. But there is another kind of pocker tournament played annually in Europe that would seemingly appeal to television's desire to crown ultimate champions. The World Heads Up Pocker Championship staged in Barcelona is structured like the NCAA basketball tournament, only doubled. You have 128 contestants divided into four brackets – drawn randomly, not seeded – and if you win, you play pocker against the winner of the match next to you.

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Each player starts with $5,000 in pocker chips each round. The blinds go from $50-$100 to $75-$150 after one hour to $100-$200 after two hours. But the blinds remain $100-$200, emphasizing skill and delaying desperation all-ins. It's like being one of the last two players at a final pocker table. Win seven final tables, win it all. "Against a partypocker player who's not showing me much aggressiveness, I'd be raising his big blind, I'd say, probably nine times out of 10, and it really doesn't matter what the hands are. It's just two pieces of paper at that point."

Ultimately, a pocker player has to make a stand. Mickey Wernick made one in a quarterfinal match last year and doubled up. After taking a small chip lead, Wernick made a big preflop raise as Cernuto picked up A-K. But as her game improved and the money became more steady, Gowen realized to play pocker can be more than a hobby, and a few years ago she gave up travel agency business to become a full-time professional. Back before pocker was a hot TV commodity, before every tournament-hand got analyzed by a million viewers, and before online pocker turned everybody with a desktop into a legend in their own mind, there was live pocker at partypocker or pacificpocker.

That's right, actual live satellite pocker play that excited us old dogs and got us through the week. That's where we learned, that's where we studied, and that's where we sorted out the wheat from the chaff. You either made rent, or you made an exit. Pocker has been called "a tough way to make an easy buck," and believe me, the games in New Jersey in the 1990's were tough.

Las Vegas may have been called a harsh mistress, but the East Coast produces its very own, more colorful vernacular, and Atlantic City pocker has been called much worse. Why anybody would be sitting at the seven-card stud pocker tables in 1997 is beyond me. I don't know what I was doing there, but I do know why Jerome Graham was there. For three years, a quiet, intense young man played at the pocker rooms in his hometown of Atlantic City and absorbed everything. He may not have been a big winner, but he was a big learner, and when he finally turned twenty-one, he tossed that fake ID on his desk at home and tossed his fate to the wind - he would become a professional pocker player.