Daaaaaaamn!

It’s not often that you see a straight up call out from one poker pro to another but that’s exactly what Team PokerStars Online pro Lex Veldhuis did on his recent appearance on*Joe Ingram*'s Poker Life podcast.

Recent rumors have been swirling around that Veldhuis, the well-known online poker specialist, had some ill-will in the direction of top tier televised pro Antonio Esfandiari, the inaugural All In For One Drop Champion. Ingram jumped right in and Lex—with little hesitation—didn’t hold back on telling a couple stories that from his point of view, led Veldhui to declare Esfandiari as “worthless” and he openly expressed his “fuck this dude” attitude.

It’s not some off-handed comment either as Lex speaks to his dislike of Esfandiari for about a good 10 minutes right at the top of the show, and while it seems that Lex is harboring a decent amount of animosity for Antonio he does admit that the pair have had limited interaction, and it sounds like that pair haven’t spoken or interacted in years.

Nevertheless, Veldhuis doesn’t hold back and joins the last guy to speak out like this, Daniel Colman, by getting a jab in on Phil Hellmuth while he’s at it.

The whole podcast is two hours, but for this part of the story, you can start right at the beginning.

More fightin’ words: Daniel Colman Rips Phil Hellmuth, Calls Him “Spineless”,“Cancer To This World”

A few of the most recognizable names in the game of poker are lending their likeness to the new worldwide online Bitcoin poker site Get Lucky Poker. Poker mainstays Mike “The Mouth” Matusow and Robert & Michael MIzrachi are putting their poker star power behind the fledgling site which is hoping that people will turn their USD (or any currency) into BTC in order to play some unfettered online poker from just about anywhere.

The new site is currently in beta, so grinders who look closely will find an occasional Bitcoin freeroll just for logging on and giving their platform a spin. With a soft launch promised this month and a variety of games planning to be offered (including Badugi, Badeci and Deuce To Seven) Get Lucky looks to benefit from their affiliation with the Merge Network which remains open to US players and where most players play at www.carbonpoker.ag.

While the site still has some fleshing out to be done, it’s looking like they will have all the goodies that online grinders have come to expect – VIP status, bad beat jackpot and deposit bonuses.

If you are looking to pick up a little loose change follow Get Lucky online and potentially find yourself in a freeroll where you can earn some fraction of a Bitcoin!

During the 2015 PCA, PokerNews sat down with one of the living legends of the game of poker Barry Greenstein as he opens up about his life story. Check out the 4-part interview (all in one place.)

Part 1 up top, part 2-4 after the jump…

Part 3

Part 4

Poker outdoorsman and WSOP Main Event beast Bryan “Devo” Devonshire recently hurt his knee by “jumping off a cliff” and he’s planning on getting physical therapy so he can get back to doing all of the things that he loves.

Here’s his physical therapy questionnaire where he has a little fun with those he hopes will help repair the damage to his knee. Of course, we think he’s joking around…nobody really plays trampoline dodgeball do they?

EPT Live color commentator Joe Stapleton regularly entertains his viewing audience using his razor sharp wit and self-deprecating humor, making him one of the most well-liked broadcasters in poker today. So, when viewers had the chance to see him face the stark spotlight of the stand-up comedy stage they voted to watch him do his comedy thing during the 2015 PCA episode of Challenge Stapes.

Every stop on the EPT Joe undertakes a new challenge at the pleasure of his viewers and this time he was to deliver a series of one liners to three Team PokerStars Pros: Chris Moneymaker, Fatima Moreira de Melo and Theo Jorgensen.

If the busto pros didn’t like a joke they chuck a rotten tomato in the direction of Stapes. Now, there’s no stopping these tomatoes from flying, but can Stapes tell jokes and artfully dodge the flying fruit at the same time? Check it out.

Bonus unrelated video: In other side action, watch as PokerNews’ Remko takes you inside the alcohol fueled player party.

The world foremost loss leader in online poker has reportedly decided to take a few million off the poker tables and put it into the game of bridge. Danish business publication Berlingske Business Growth (as translated by the Googles) reports that “The Great Dane” has invested “millions” in a new shuffle machine not for poker, but for bridge.

The new machine, called Bridge+Dealer, from what we gather is a bridge tournament shuffle machine, dealer and even records how the games are going. So, it looks like the nosebleeds may have to do without Gus for a little while as he turns to bridge to make back some of the over $20,000,000 he’s reportedly lost online at Full Tilt Poker.

How All-American is the game of poker? So much so that when the Major League Baseball Players Trust decided they wanted to raise money for others in need – they turned to poker over their own “America’s Pastime.”

Tonight at the MGM Grand over 35 current and former major leaguers are taking a seat at the felt in a charity poker tournament hoping to raise money for those in need.

Some of the biggest names in the game of baseball will be testing their poker skills including MLB Hall of Famers Ozzie Smith, Dave Winfield and Eddie Murray. Retired pros like Barry Bonds, Adam Dunn, Kenny Lofton and Reggie Sanders join current superstars Shane Victorino, Drew Stubbs, James Loney, Josh Johnson and many more plan on going all-in all night.

Plus, if you bust a Major Leaguer he’ll give you the shirt right off his back. Of course, every ball player will be wearing their own jersey so the poker playing public can walk away with not just a good memory and the feeling of helping others but a pretty sick souvenir to wear or mount on the wall.

So swing away tonight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas at 7pm. No reservations needed, you can just show up, buy-in and take it down.

For more information on the MLB Players Trust go here and to take a seat at the All-Star event, click here for more info.

As the week in the Bahamas for the PokerStars PCA wraps up, so do the entertaining question and answer sessions some of the top tier pros. Last, but certainly not least, was Daniel Negreanu and as one would expect Kid Poker didn’t hold anything back.

Daniel tackled the task of helping you get your mind right when trying to do better than your best at the imperfect game of poker. From declaring your intentions to carrying out an actual plan to help you accomplish your goals the Poker Hall of Famer took questions from the Bahamian audience and dished out the answer like only the #1 All-Time Money Leader could.

Watch the video right here and read some of the transcripts over on the PokerStars Blog: PCA 2015: The mental game, with Daniel Negreanu

We’ve all been there. You’re running bad and nothing is helping. Aces cracked, running flushes and the 2-outer on the river. It seems like the poker gods have turned against you and all of a sudden you’re the guy every one avoids because you just can’t stop telling bad beat stories.

Over at Bluff Europe, Jeff Kimber feels your pain. He’s been through it all and as it turns out, he’s currently in one hell of a downswing. In fact, he’s so far in it that he needs help getting out and so he’s reached out to some of his professional poker playing friends (with 100 years experience between them) for some words of advice. Lucky for us – he’s decided to share and many of the tidbits are more than worth taking note of.

Keep a positive attitude, think before you act and don’t let past results keep you from making the perfect move are just some of the concepts extracted from the words.

Some are practical:

Overbet against the older calling stations. Never call on the river in a tough spot without the nuts.

While some are philosophical:

Many years ago, there was a TV fortune teller called Evadne Price, who used to come on just before the black and white television schedule shut down for the night and say ‘Think lucky and you will be lucky’.

But all are worth your time. So, stop feeling sorry for yourself and get your game back on track with 10 ways to stop Running Bad

This gives a new definition to The Poker Kitchen. According to our pals at HighstakesDB, PokerStars and UK restauranteurs Jones & Son are teaming up during the upcoming 2015 UKIPT to offer poker and foodie fans a chance to test their luck (and skill) at the poker and dining tables.

The All-In Kitchen near East London will be a pop-up restaurant where patrons can come in and go all-in. Eaters will get seated with a set amount of chips and then depending on how they do in the game of cards, it will depend on how much they pay for their meal. This means that if you’ve got the poker skills to pay the bills and you end up a winner – you literally do not have to pay the bills.

In addition to the poker themed ambiance the menu is also a rounders delight with dishes named “Royal Flush of King Crab Thermidor”, “4 Of A Kind Lamb Chops” and “Queen Scallops…” etc.

Sound cool? Act fast as just like an underground game of poker this pop-up isn’t around for long. Check out the All-In Kitchen website for additional menu items, dates (Jan 19-21) and booking information.

Looks like there may be yet another poker movie in the works as Deadline reports that Hollywood heavyweight Relativity Media have bought the screen rights to “Blood Aces: The Wild Ride of Benny Binion“ by author Doug Swanson.

Screenwriter Cliff Dorfman, who is also currently working on a reboot of “The Crow” and has episodes of the HBO hit “Entourage” to his credit, has been tapped to adapt the book in which chronicles the life and times of gambling and poker legend Benny Binion.

From Deadline:

Binion’s résumé reads like this: cowboy, pioneering casino owner, gangster, killer and founder of the World Series of Poker. The book chronicles his  role in shaping modern Las Vegas. From a Texas backwater, Binion rose to prominence on a combination of vision, determination and brutal expediency. His formula was simple: Run a good business, cultivate the big boys, kill your enemies, own the cops. While he controlled his competition through ruthless violence, his irresistible charm brought him the protection of the political elite.

This is just an initial purchase so no possible dates or actors are in the mix but one would assume that if Benny and the first WSOP make it to the silver screen that someone is going to have to play Doyle Brunson. Who would you pick to play young Benny and Doyle?

It’s one of the lowest level debates in poker. Sunglasses. Maybe you wear them, maybe you don’t but for every guy who rocks a pair of Wayfarers indoors at the poker table, there’s a guy on the other side mocking him.

Blake Eastman, a professional poker player with a background in non-verbal behavior, attacks the pros and cons of integrating sunglasses into your game.

More Poker Tells: Beyond Tells Looks To Revolutionize The Reading Of Players

Picking up where he left off last summer at the World Series of Poker, Remko grabs Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu and has him tell a tale or two about the greatness of Phil Ivey.

In the latest Ivey Story, Negreanu remembers a day when Ivey was in a pressure situation on the golf course, with hundreds of thousands on the line and a low percentage put needed to be made to win all the money. You’ll see, for Ivey, it’s not whether you win or lose it’s how you play the game.

UFC Hall of Fame fighter Tito Ortiz took the poker world by storm this past week by showing up at the PokerStars PCA, sitting in the Shark Cage and answering some questions from his fans at a Q&A.

After busting the Main Event, the serious striker had one more pleasantry for those who dared to tackle the task. A full fledged waterside workout on the beaches of the Bahamas.

PokerNews’ Remko Rinkema and PokerStars’ Liv Boeree were both up to the challenge as the Huntington Beach Bad Boy pushed an eclectic group of masochists and fitness enthusiasts to be better versions of themselves.

Bonus – watch the Q&A with Tito right here.

You’re close to the money but you’re short on chips. If you can simply outlast a few more people it’ll mean big bucks to your bankroll so you waste time every chance you get in hopes that someone else get involved in a hand that sends them to the rail as you nurse your short stack to a min-cash payday. This is stalling.

If you’re on a table near the bubble with poker pro Scott Baumstein and you decide to stall, you’d best believe you are going to get called out. That’s exactly what happened during the money bubble of the 2015 PCA as Scott and his tablemates piled an unapologetic staller who, after suffering a bad beat, went on time-wasting tirade in hopes to make the min-cash.

As Scott explains to Remko Rinkema over at PokerNews, while he got his verbal licks in and even caused a little bit of a scene, sadly the moral of story isn’t what you’d hope as the staller’s antics worked and with one big blind left, he left the tournament $18K the richer.

Professional poker player and noted party animal Jeff Gross is living it up down in the Bahamas this week at the PokerStars PCA. Of course, the high roller is taking his shots against the sharks on-the-felt but it seems he’s doing the same off-the-felt as the self described “professional best friend” got up close and cozy with a shiver of sharks in the crystal blue waters near the Atlantis.

If that’s not crazy enough, Gross went hog wild (sorry about that) just a short time later when a pair of piglets came out to join him for a swim.

It didn’t take long for Gross to get out of the waters though and jump into the deep end of tournament poker making a deep run in the $2.2K Turbo (where he suffered a sickening beat to lose all of these chips.)

Got it all in pre flop with AK vs QK for the chip lead and the player spiked queen on the turn to cripple me and then out! Playing great and warmed up for the 25k event tomorrow.

More Jeff Grossness: Phil Laak and Jeff Gross Hang Loose At Surf Camp

News of Canada’s powerful poker super computer, Cepheus, has taken the mainstream media by storm with many outlets inferring that poker, not just a very select version, is solved.

Read: No Money Heads Up – Researchers Solve Heads-Up Limit Hold’em

While for heads-up limit hold’em that may be true, noted poker author and Two Plus Two mainstay David Sklansky tells Bloomberg that there is at least one area that he still maintains his edge – his killer instinct.

Sklansky seems to concede that, in the long run, Cepheus would win out – even over him – but against a hapless noob Sklansky things that he’s the better bet.

“If the computer is playing a bad player, it will win, but it won’t win as quickly as a human being playing a bad player.”

“I will destroy that beginner to a greater degree than this computer program will.”

That said, David does see why people are impressed with the poker prowess of Cepheus even if it’s limited to limit.

Read more: Poker Star Says He Can Make More Money Than A Robot Playing Hold’em