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Today in the 3-Bet we find Gus Hansen champing at the bit for the Full Tilt Poker relaunch, Jason Mercier slipping from the top spot on the Global Poker Index and Daniel Negreanu revisiting what poker used to be before the internet got all up in its business.
1) Full Tilt Springs Back to Life; Gus Champs for Action
In case you missed it yesterday, the new Full Tilt Poker website is back online and (sort of) open for business. How it stands right now:
Non-US players can login to accounts, view balances and use play-money tables Players from regulated markets can pair accounts with PokerStars and make withdrawals already US players can see FTP points but account balances appear as $0 and play-money still inaccessible until Nov. 6 Gus Hansen, Tom Dwan and Viktor Blom seem ready to blow the high-stakes tables off the hinges as soon as the real-money switch is flipped.Tweeted Hansen yesterday:
Full Tilt Launch 5 days to go! Very excited and I think with Me, Durrrr and Isildur hitting the tables we will see a lot of crazy action!
— Gus Hansen (@RealGusHansen) November 1, 2012More on the Full Tilt relaunch and what to expect on the new site here.
2) Mercier Drops to #2 on GPI, Smith New #1
It’s been a nice (and profitable) last couple of months for Jason Mercier but not even a great WSOPE could fend off the charge of tournament wrecker Dan “KingDan” Smith on the Global Poker Index.
The latest GPI rankings are out for this week and show Smith in the top spot for the first time while Mercier falls to #2 overall.
Smith, with a Super High Roller win in Barcelona and a Partouche Main Event final table of hiw own jumped five spots from last week to take the overall lead at 3,056.84 points.
Mercier is about 140 points back at 2,913.98. The rest of the top 10:
#1 (+5) Dan Smith 3056.85 #2 (-1) Jason Mercier 2913.38 #3 — Marvin Rettenmaier 2766.21 #4 (-2) Bertrand Grospellier 2744.54 #5 — Andrew Lichtenberger 2545.70 #6 (-2) Philipp Gruissem 2531.40 #7 — Stephen O’Dwyer 2487.96 #8 — Phil Hellmuth 2421.95 #9 (+1) Vanessa Selbst 2404.80 #10(-1) Michael Watson 2400.12Check the full top 300 out here.
3) Negreanu Explains Secret to Success Before Internet Boom
Remember what poker was like before the Internet boom? Few do really.
By most accounts, though, it was an old man’s game with nitty and/or degen regulars who didn’t know their effective-stack-size asses from their ICM elbows.
Money flowed like gold coins down a chocolate waterfall and all you had to do to clean up was play a lot pre-flop, bet small, fold when you missed and play big pots when you hit.
Easy, hey?
Seems too good to be true but that’s exactly how Daniel Negreanu says it was in a new blog post looking back at poker before the Internet changed everything.
Negreanu focuses a lot on bet-sizing but he also reveals his main secret to success before 2004:
“I played a lot of hands for small amounts, but when there was a big pot being played, I simply had the goods.”
Or in other words he figured out "small ball" before everyone else did. Or almost everyone else, save O’Neil Longson and Alan Goering.
Yep, you read those last two names right. Check out Negreanu’s fantastic flashback here.
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