On May 23, 2003, I was a television news reporter. I played online poker on the side. I'd already fallen in love with the movie Rounders. I played local home games regularly. I'd been to Vegas the year before and cut my teeth at the Bellagio. Two weeks earlier, a...more

It's tough to be a live-plus-online pro in Asia. Unlike Europe, which has lots of live events fairly close together and friendly online tournament times, Asian live tournaments are far-flung and major online tournaments start in the middle of the night. Since the start of the year from Singapore to...more

We have good tournament directors around the world, but sometimes they and their partners make really bad decisions, and often the reason that they do is they aren't playing poker every day. What we need to have happen at all major events is to have a committee of players who...more

My PLO results since the middle of last year have been kind of frustrating. They've forced me to think about Omaha and poker in general in ways that I never did before. I thought back across my poker career. I started off playing limit hold'em. Then I transitioned to no-limit...more

For the last year I've been trying hard to improve my online cash games. I'd always played cash games before I got into tournaments, but when I started having tournament success I stopped playing them for a while. When I got back to them I kind of felt stuck. The...more

I didn't have much sleep before going to the EPT Final, because my nephew was born at 5am on day 1a. Obviously I had to stay in London to rail that in. Luckily, I was playing day 1b. So, after an hour's sleep and a dawn hospital visit to meet...more

Before I got into poker I was a professional billiards player. I had quite a bit of success in my home country of Romania and in the rest of Europe. As a professional, I practiced a lot. If a big tournament was coming up, I would practice seven to eight...more

I just got back a few weeks ago from a trip to Japan. I went right before WSOP Asia Pacific, and I am really glad I did because I'll be busy over the next couple of months with the EPT and SCOOP, and then with the WSOP this summer. I...more

I spent some time in Canada this spring trying to get in some relaxation time. I've been playing a lot online, but also trying to take breaks, too, to keep myself alert and focused. One thing I like to do when not playing is to watch various television series like...more

In addition to playing a pretty full schedule this year, I've gotten back into teaching poker more regularly as well, and it has really been rewarding to do so. I obviously started out as an amateur player, then shortly after winning the WSOP Main Event in 2003 I began to...more

I've talked before about my visa problems. They forced me to stay home in Russia all winter. As a result I spent a lot of time playing online poker and working on my game. Eventually it all paid off in a big way. March was an amazing month for me....more

It's hard to believe that it has been ten years since Chris Moneymaker helped spark the poker boom by winning the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event. The then 27-year-old baby-faced accountant from Tennessee sported a pair of Oakley Straightjackets sunglasses on his way to a $2.5-million payday and...more

I returned from EPT Berlin to find a really sweet and uplifting message in my Facebook inbox. It was from a fellow named Michael who wrote to say he'd been grinding the small stakes MTTs online for a few years and had developed a huge love for poker, but had...more

People often talk about how much tougher poker is today than it was four years ago. They're right about that but that doesn't mean that the games are unbeatable. It just means that the old ways of improving aren't the best ways anymore. When I started to play poker 8...more

I'm writing this post from the World Series of Poker Asia Pacific where Phil Ivey and Daniel Negreanu were among those winning bracelets. In the tournament Ivey won (the 8-game mixed event), he actually knocked me out in a no-limit hold'em hand with around 20 players left. In fact, that's...more

It has been another busy year of traveling again, with a big highlight so far being the Norwegian Championships in March. As far as playing went, I came in third in the heads-up event, although the rest didn't go so well. But it was still great fun and I wanted...more

It's been a good year so far. As far as live poker goes, in March I played in the 2013 Championship of the Slovak Republic in Bratislava. I've been playing in that series for seven years now, and it is always a lot of fun. Unfortunately I busted the Main...more

It's springtime, and if you're like me you're starting to think about the Spring Championship of Online Poker on PokerStars. SCOOP is a great series and I always look forward to starting the grind of playing all of those tournaments. One very nice aspect of SCOOP is how accessible it...more

Hello from Germany, where we are basking in the afterglow of the European Poker Tour returning to Berlin. It's always a great time, and one aspect of the schedule I really liked this year was the inclusion of a couple of seven-card stud events, one of which is a pot-limit...more

Five titles in five months, no problem for Team PokerStars Pro Marcel Luske, also known as the "Flying Dutchman". In fact, Luske's last five cashes have all been wins in PokerStars events. Luske's good fortune began back in December 2012 when he topped a field of 130 players to win...more