If you are on the East Coast, specifically New Jersey, then you know is f***in’ cold outside. Not your garden variety “chilly with a chance of snow flurries”, but “I can’t feel my face” kinda cold.

But like a perfect storm, BorgataPoker.com is putting the freeze on the cold weather and kicking off their $1,000,000 guaranteed online tournament series the Garden State Super Series this Sunday.

From January 11th thru January 25th BorgataPoker has 23 events each with 3 buy-in levels (making a total of 69 tournaments) and guaranteed cash over the course of the series of over $1M.

Looking for a bounty tournament? They got it. Rebuy tournament? They got it. Pot Limit Omaha your game? Yep that too. They’ve improved the GSSS in a bunch of ways including putting big bucks up top so the winners of each tournament take a bigger piece of the pie.

So if you are lucky enough to be living (or staying) in New Jersey and locked inside this weekend, it’s time you fired up that laptop and participated in one of the largest tournament series New Jersey has ever seen – GSSS II.

Don’t have an account yet? No worries at all. BorgataPoker is doing whatever they can to woo you, including depot bonuses. So, remember to play with your head, not with your rent and go put a sick beat on someone and get your piece of GSSS II!

Rounders.
Moneymaker.
Twitch.tv?

While the next poker revolution may not be televised, perhaps it will be live streamed. Just ask Jason Somerville the leader of the new online poker streaming movement through his popular RunItUp campaign. Since leaving the now defunct Ultimate Poker, Somerville has increased his legion of fans through a delayed livestream where he grinds real money cash games and tournaments while explaining his thoughts on his process on Twitch.tv.

PokerNews, who is in the Bahamas covering the PCA, attended a discussion panel where Somerville discussed the relatively new frontier that is live streaming poker and the Twitch platform being perfect for beginners and enthusiasts to watch, learn and fall in love with the game of poker all over again.

“I feel like poker’s best fit is on the Internet where you can stream whatever you want, whenever you want, for as long as you want,” he said. “And not only is it cheaper and more cost efficient, but it makes more sense for poker.”

Read: How Live Streaming Could Help Spark Another Poker Boom

It’s not just Somerville who is bringing his game and insights to Twitch and other livestream platforms like YouTube. This past holiday season we saw the rise of the entertaining StickyRice1 as well as found pros like Dan O’ Brien, Ryan Laplante and Marcel Luske streaming on Twitch. The practice of playing in public is catching on and it seems like the poker community is into it.

Over at PokerListings, they break down some of the benefits of watching others get their game on. Of course, there’s poker entertainment but also the best streamers engage in conversation about what they are doing and why.

If you find yourself obsessed with poker – and we know you are – contend with the trolls and bask in some live stream goodness. If you are a broadcaster…hit us up! We want to know.

Read: Want to Get Better at Poker? Watch Free Poker Livestreams on Twitch.tv

Canadian researchers have all but solved Heads Up Limit Poker with their new powerhouse poker bot named Cepheus. The researchers claim to have found the optimal strategy, in the trillions of possible strategies, that will give the winning edge everytime to the robot.

According to NPR’s 'All Things Considered’, it took Cepheus inventor Michael Bowling many years and a massive amount of computing power to develop the near-perfect artificial player.

“It’s just a tiny bit off,” Bowling says. “And that tiny bit is so small that even if you played a lifetime — 12 hours a day, 200 hands an hour for 70 years — you still wouldn’t be able to tell it apart from having played a perfect game.”

They claim that no matter your strategy from spewy to nitty, Cepheus will ultimately win all the money.

Not to fear though, the team at the University of Alberta have no plans to unleash Cehpeus on the poker world. Even if they did, it’d be unlikely that you’d ever encounter it as it a specialist in Heads-Up Limit Hold’em – not exactly the fastest growing variety of poker being played.

Read More: The Poker-Playing Computer is Unbeatable

Awards season for film and TV is well underway ya’ll and for poker it’s no different. With a number of “Best Of’s” ceremonies coming down the pike, one of the first to announce its winners is the Bluff Magazine Readers Choice Awards.

There were 12 categories that poker fans voted on and the results are in – all of them. Interestingly enough, not only does Bluff announce the winner but you are privy to all the results. The order of the runners-up and percentage of the votes that they got are generally included in each category. So, of course, Dan Colman won in the Breakout Performer category – not a shock – but who came in 2nd and how many percentage points they got is also fun to read.

We’re not going to spoil all the winners here but a number of worthy recipients took home the awards. By “take home” we mean they were able to print out the article, slap a gold star on it and give it to their parents to put on their respective refrigerators.

Check it out: Bluff Magazine Readers Choice Award Winners

When the World Series of Poker announced the return of the $10,000,000 first place guarantee on the $10K Main Event, perhaps surprisingly, they received a little bit of a backlash.

You see, not everyone is interested in the marketing idea of having so much money up top…in fact, many would argue that keeping the payouts flatter and including more min-cashers would make the experience more enjoyable for everyone involved – as well as keep players coming back for more.

With the WSOP being the premiere brand in poker and also having a pretty great track record of listening to its customers, they’ve created a 10 question survey asking YOU how YOU think the payouts in the Main Event should be.

Have you played the Main? Do you intend to? Would you if the payouts were flatter? They wanna know and here’s your chance to help them give you want you want. There’s no right or wrong answer and the WSOP needs your feedback. So don’t delay, click the link below, and be heard!

WSOP Main Event 10 Question Survey

(h/t Mr. Kevmath !)

It’s a long one, but if you are a fan of “The Champ” you’re going to want to check out the latest episode of Chicago Joey's longform podcast Poker Life.

Joey and Greg shoot the shit on a number of life topics including everything poker, fitness and Merson’s travels in general.

You don’t really need the video portion of this podcast, so if you are at work throw on some headphones, bring up a spreadsheet and catch up with 2012 World Series of Poker Champion Greg Merson as he grinds from his home in New Jersey.

The big time ballers were back at it yesterday as the PCA Super High Roller got underway and it didn’t take long for the first big time prop bet of 2015 to get offered, accepted and eventually paid out.

While playing a game of “Lodden Thinks” (the game made famous by Phil Laak and Antonio Esfandiari) the question of how many air squats could someone do in an hour was asked. Canadian poker pro Mike “Timex” McDonald, who was serving as the brain for the game, ventured a guess that the number was incredibly high, like 1800.

It didn’t take long before Bill “The Businessman” Perkins, a notorious prop bet banker,to balk at that number and then offer Timex a $10K bet that he couldn’t do a measly 300 in an hour.

Offer accepted.

Timex not only went on to destroy that prop bet, as he tells PokerNews’ Remko Rinkema, he’s only a little sore and that it was “fairly easy.”

When’s the last time you got $10K for a fairly easy workout?

Later in the day, the pair settled on $10K another bet – 350 pushups in one hour. This one, by most accounts, was more difficult and try as he might, McDonald gassed out at 323 as the time limit expired. It’s not a total wash though as Perkins offered to give $10K to Timex’s charity of choice if he made 300 but required Timex to give $10K to charity if he failed.

That’s $20K headed to help people in need.

Bonus time: Perkins talked with PokerNews about giving money to charity.

There’s many stages of evolution when it comes to taking your poker game from amateur to amazing. One of the early phases is the learning of the lingo. From “One Time!” to “Ship It!” there’s a language of phrases that poker has acquired that everybody learns, uses and unfortunately at time – abuses.

Aaron Todd over at Casino City Times pleads with the poker playing public to resign themselves in 2015 to resign some tired poker table talk cliches.

Are you the guy begging the dealer? Bemoaning your bad beat? Praying to the poker gods? You may not even realize that you may be putting your fellow players on full blown tilt (see that?).

So if you are a Chatty Charlie at the table, take a look at this list of poker cliches and see how many you say on the reg.

Read: Top 10 Things To Stop Saying At The Poker Table This Year

Most of the time, he’s the most feared poker player on the planet.

Then, occasionally, Phil Ivey is this: a Harry Potter look-a-like on New Year’s Eve.

Make no mistake about it though, just because Ivey’s honking his own horn while ringing in 2015, he’s not joking around this year. Not only will all eyes be on Ivey to see if he can separate himself from Doyle and Johnny Chan in the WSOP bracelet chase, Ivey Poker is supposed to get a serious retooling in this calendar year.

Like he says in his caption, 2015 looks to be a fun year for Phil Ivey.

Then again, when your Phil Ivey, what year isn’t fun?

The effort to “sportily” poker kicks into high gear in 2015 for Alex Dreyfus and his Global Poker Index.

Yesterday, courtesy of GPI’s Eric Danis, the Global Poker Index unveiled additional dates and details for their previously announced Global Poker Masters competition (an event they’re calling the World Cup of poker).

Players, brought together by both country and talent, will represent their homeland for pride and prizes as the inaugural GPM takes place on March 21 & 22 during PokerStars EPT Malta stop. The exact format has yet to be announced but that’s not stopping the GPI from confirming which players are being offered a seat that the table.

It’s also not stopping Dreyfus from hyping the future contest:

“GPI’s is to Sportify the game of poker and the presentation of this innovative event will go a long way towards accomplishing that goal. There is no buy-in for the event, we want to create an international competition where players are playing for pride, country and for the love of the game in hopes to showcase the game’s best. Through the GPI, it will create a solid platform for poker to be promoted through new distribution channels and mainstream partners.”

Eight nations are fielding teams including the US, UK, Germany, Canada, Russia, France, Italy and the Ukraine. Each team will have five players: that country’s GPI National Player of the Year as well the next 3 highest ranked players and an as-yet-to-be-announced wildcard.

Check out the qualified participants:

Team USA: Dan Smith, Daniel Colman, Pratyush Buddiga & Jacob Schindler
Team UK: Stephen Chidwick, Jack Salter, Simon Deadman & Oliver Price
Team Germany: Ole Schemion, Marvin Rettenmaier, Martin Finger & George Danzer
Team Russia: Anatoly Filatov, Vladimir Troyanovskiy, Ivan Soshnikov & Vitaly Lunkin
Team France: Erwann Pecheux, Benjamin Pollak, Sylvain Loosli & Fabrice Soulier
Team Italy: Dario Sammartino, Mustapha Kanit, Andrea Dato & Giuliano Bendinelli
Team Ukraine: Eugene Katchalov, Oleksanr Gnatenko, Artem Metalidi & Oleksii Khoroshenin

Not all of these players are for sure going – in fact Colman is saying he will NOT be there – so the next highest ranked player in that region will be invited.

Additionally, this isn’t just for the players as the GPI is planning a multi-lingual lifestream and possibly even some side action.

Read more: List of Initial Players, Countries Qualified For Global Poker Masters 2015 Revealed

We get it Jason Koon: you’re super in shape.

Professional poker pro and super high roller Jason Koon takes two things seriously: playing cards and working out.

Here Jason is, mocking of those of us mere mortals who do push-ups or burpies by adding an uber-athletic twist for 2015.

More Jason: Seat Locked And Fully Loaded In Macau*

According to Dalla, it turns out that the easiest part about creating a new poker show is the poker itself. Everything else is hard work.

But even with all his experience in the poker industry from the WSOP to working with ESPN, Dalla admits that after 26 episodes of brand new poker content even he learned a thing or two. In his latest blog Dalla reflects on what it takes to bring the made-for-tv cash game to your television screens, some of the best memories and a few of the rougher spots during the year.

So if you’ve been watching all the episodes here on F5 and are interested in some behind-the-scenes summary of Year One, check this out: Looking Back At The First Season of 'Poker Night In America’

Looking for the latest episode, watch it here:

KPTV – FOX 12

It’s not everyday you get the chance to go to a rodeo and play a hand of poker while a tortured bull thrashes around you, threatening your life. So, the next time you actually do get that chance, remember the above video and promptly decline the invitation.

While many of the top pros mark the PokerStars PCA the grinders out there know that that Commerce Casino’s Los Angeles Poker Classic is where you can go to see massive guaranteed prize pools for modest buy-ins. With Tournament Direct Matt Savage at the helm once again the LAPC, which kicks off later this month, is littered with a wide variety of tournaments (including Crazy Pineapple 8 or better) and multiple large guarantee tournaments every day.

It all leads up to the World Poker Tour LAPC Championship Main Event, a $10K buy-in, in February.

Additionally, if you hate re-entry tournament Savage calls the 2015 LAPC “the beginning of the end for re-entry” as only 2 of the 52 scheduled events allow for same day re-entry.

So start building your WSOP bankroll now by making a trip to the Best Coast and binking a LAPC prelim!

Click here for a closer look at the LAPC schedule.

The regular season schedule is behind us and the drive thru the NFL playoffs has begun and for New Jersey poker players there may be nothing better than watching the big game while grinding online.

The team at BorgataPoker.com knows this and here in the New Year they hook you up and help you watch “The Big Game” like a baller. The 'Big Game Giveaway’ taking place at BorgataPoker.com and thru January 5-11 new players will be collecting bunches of Bonus Dollars and someone out there is going to pick up a sick 65” curved ultra HDTV to enjoy each and every gridiron touchdown.

So here’s the deal – if you are liven’ the dream in New Jersey simply sign up for an account at BorgataPoker.com. Then every day this week, opt-in to the promo and you’ll earn an entry into the drawing. That’s it. No bonus to clear. No trivia questions to answer. Just click a button and cross your fingers.

Of course, if you are looking for bonuses – BorgataPoker’s got 'em. Deposit bonuses and iReward Points plus some of the biggest legal online poker tournaments in the U.S.

So, get on it and opt-in this week and maybe by this time next week, you’ll be installing your new dream TV. As always though play with your head, not with your rent.

Happy New Year! We’re back to bringing you random poker entertainment and the occasional news item to help you fill your week with tons of poker goodness.

There’s no better time than the start of a new year to get your poker game in order and relinquish bad habits that terrorized your 2014 stat sheet.

Over at Card Player Noted poker authority Ed Miller has some words of advice for you and that’s to stop folding so much! In him popular column Miller outlines a few situations where, truth be told, the average poker player lets go of his cards way too often. Take for instance when the flop comes all one suit…

When the flop comes all one suit, many players mentally check out on the hand if they don’t hold a flush or a strong flush draw. But this reaction overestimates the chance that another player has flopped a flush.

Using that 20 percent preflop range from the previous example, on a flop like K63 (all diamonds), a player flops a flush only about five percent of the time. They hold the nut flush draw only another six percent of the time. They hold any diamond at all only about 37 percent of the time.

Wanna see other situations where you need to hang on just a little bit longer? Check out the full article right here: Five Situations Where You Fold Too Much

On the flip side though, another poker authority, author Jonathan Little, wants you to think about folding a little more – even in spots where you have a pretty premium holding. In his column The Art If Folding In A Bad Spot Little tells the tale of a hand he played at the WPT BestBet where he was put to the test holding top top. A quick read and a good lesson.

Legendary cricket player turned poker pro Shane Warne off-handedly announced yesterday that he and his sponsor of nearly 7 years, 888poker, have “parted ways.”

The departure of Warne from 888poker is yet another in a long line of ways parting that has taken place over the past 12 months as he joins a laundry list of poker pros who have found themselves replying on poker, not patches, to earn themselves returns in the game. Victoria Coren Mitchell, Kara Scott, Marvin Rettenmaier, JC Tran, Jason Somerville, Joe Cada, Gus Hansen, Viktor Blom, “Nacho” Barbero, Humberto Brenes and the entire Ultimate Poker (RIP) team all found themselves embarking on solo careers in the past calendar year.

So, what’s next for Warne? The bloggers over at Poker Asia Pacific seem to think that Warne may have left Team 888 for greener pastures. A sponsorship side piece. But with that still being mere rumor the only thing we can point to is that Shane is still planning on playing a ton as his Tweet indicates that he’ll be participation in the 2015 Aussie Millions.