Poker, Away from the Table
Like a lot of poker enthusiasts, I’m enthralled with the greater poker world. Certainly, I’d prefer to be playing, but I love to watch what the big boys are doing. I’m not above dreaming about a WSOP victory or playing in Bobby’s Room. So I find myself visiting a handful of sites in order to keep up with the who’s who of poker: PokerNews.com, PokerKingBlog.com and PokerListings.com.
The last few weeks I’ve been following the WCOOP and WSOPE coverages on the PokerListings.com online poker guide.
The site in general has everything you are looking for in poker coverage. They have the latest news: Did durrrr win or lose a million today? How much richer is David Benyamine (rich enough that he’s still dating way outside his league)? What did our awesome government do to block our rights today? and Who at UltimateBet or AbsolutePoker is stealing from you now?
By far, my favorite part of the site is the MarketPulse, an up-to-date directory of poker’s biggest and smallest pots and winners and losers. I love this feature. I love to see who and what cards win the big pots. You can even look yourself up and it will give you a few words on your play. [I'm a bomb. Yeah, I know. I explode about twice a session.]
So, how about their live poker tournaments section? This site has some particularly cool features. They have every iota of detail about the tournament right at your fingertips: the blind structure, payouts, entrants, etc. I love that the feed saves the leader’s chip counts. Rather than other sites which just give you the current chip counts, if you come into this feed in the middle, you can catch up on how the chips have moved around while you were gone. This site seems to differentiate itself with it’s pithy, witty copy. They have their cute headings on sections: “Kim has a heart attack!” (for Kelly Kim’s AK losing to John Juanda’s AK when John’s caught a flush) or “Scho’ me the money” (when Erica Shoenberg wins a big pot). Thanks for bringing back that gem of late 90s pop culture, guys. They have all the regular coverage of the tournament too. They have pictures of the pros and the stories of different hands (though I’d prefer to have even more hands). They have the big laydowns and quotes from the table, so you don’t miss the gold that is the Matusow/Negreanu back-and-forth at the table. I’m looking forward to when these guys introduce the Hevad-Khan-Red-Bull-O-Meter sometime in the near future too.
All-in-all, PokerListings.com seems like my new favorite place to get my overall poker world fix away from the table.
