Planet Mark's Blog. Thoughts, News And Strategy For Poker Tournaments Of All Sizes

Planet Mark's Blog

Explaining Poker To Relatives - The Great Scrabble Thought Experiment!

Now, I know poker is a game of skill, you know poker is a game of skill - but our relatives and non-poker playing friends... what do they think of the game?? This post is a 'thought experiment' let us enter the head of one of those non-poker types for a second and see if we can understand them a little better!!

55 Different Types Of Online Poker Tournament

Logged on over the weekend and spotted yet another tournament type I had not seen before (the 'Pure Bounty At Party as it happens)... this lead to the trusty notebook coming out and a list of different types of poker tournament created. Here are my 55 different types of online poker tournament - let me know if I missed any!

Super-Mega-Ultra-Turbo Games… Is Online Poker Going Too Fast?

Back when I was young (hehe) and grinding SNGs at Pokerstars , Turbo meant 5 minute blinds and games that were usually completed in 35 to 45 minutes. Since then things have been speeding up… and up… and up. Today I’d like to ask the question of whether things are getting too damn fast out there?

Poker Profits And The Pareto Principle

Just a quick post, on the subject of the 80 / 20 rule – also known as the ‘Pareto Principle’. This simply states that 80% of results comes from 20% of the effort expended, this is well established and almost disturbingly accurate in business and general life situations… have a think about it, you’ll be surprised! Now, it is also established that around 80% of poker players either lose money outright or break even on their games. Leaving 20% to make the money (heavily biased towards SNG Planet readers is my guess!).

Berating The Fish Makes Me Very, Very Angry

A new post on an old favorite subject of mine – the idiots who think it is ‘cool’ and ‘smart’ to berate fish at the poker tables. This is a mixed games tale, for more of my writing on this subject you can pop over to Omaha Planet and check out the Mixed Game Poker section. Anyway, as usual the end of a busy day running the Planet Corp saw me relaxing with a game of cards – this time the $50 buy-in 8-game mix on Stars, a fun combo with 6 hands of each of the 8 different games. One particular player at the table was loose, passive and generally very bad, he entered most pots and only ever bet with the nuts or close to it, but called with any hand or draw – a strategy guaranteed to lose money fast. And guess what, he lost it fast, dropping half a stack or so and then reloading on 3 occasions in the 30 minutes I was there.