The dynamic writing duo of Irish poker phenom Dara O’Kearney and English writer Barry Carter have joined forces once again for another great poker tutorial. Their latest tome, Endgame Poker Strategy, may not have the most original title, but the content makes a perfect trifecta for their other two books.

Endgame Poker Strategy is a stand-alone volume, but where their first outing showed players how to get into big events, and their second book taught us how to take bounties, this third outing for the pair aims to teach us how to close those events out. Endgame Poker Strategy is a detailed look at the Independent Chip Model (ICM) and how it applies to endgame spots in poker tournaments.

O’Kearney is the poker brain behind the books, while Carter helps massage O’Kearney’s brain dumps into readable content. Describing the process, O’Kearney said Carter is the one who takes his basic research and turns it into a readable book, with O’Kearney providing the basic knowledge and sim data at the beginning and a final edit for voice at the end.

The result is a very readable end product that is very pithy in content, but with O’Kearney’s voice coming through clearly. This third effort shows that the O’Kearney/Carter pairing is one that continues to work well to provide the public with top-notch poker content in a very readable form.

If you are looking to improve your chances to win poker tournaments, this book is for you. It’s a rare chance to get a look inside one of the top math brains in the poker world right now, and O’Kearney is one of perhaps a handful of people you might want at the helm of a project like this.

Check out the latest work from O’Kearney and Carter—if you are looking for the secrets of how to close out poker tournaments, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better fount of knowledge to draw from.

Endgame Poker Strategy

It began as a response to the pandemic lockdowns, but now The Lock-In seems to have become a regular feature from The Chip Race crew.

Sponsored by Unibet, the spin-off from The Chip Race originally began as social interaction for Dara O’Kearney and David Lappin at the start of the pandemic, but has turned into a show of its own.

The latest edition features friend of the show and co-author, Barry Carter, back for another round of topics with O’Kearney and Lappin. Of course, one of the topics on the block in this edition is the latest collaboration between Carter and O’Kearney, Endgame Poker Strategy.

In addition to the expected shilling of the new book, the episode picks the brain of Carter, someone who is very tied into what’s happening in the poker world. Among the topics under discussion this week are Jason Koon’s jump to GGPoker, the PokerPaint controversy, and the state of play at WSOP.

Check out the latest edition of The Lock-In at the link below.

Phil Galfond, founder of the Run it Once (RIO) online poker site, is stepping onto the YouTube streets. The high-stakes PLO beast is fresh off several successful heads-up matches on the nosebleed PLO streets, and now, he is taking to YouTube to impart some of his wisdom to the masses.

Galfond took to Twitter to announce the new channel, but he did more than just announce it. One of the things that makes Galfond such a force in the poker world is his ability to look honestly at his own games and habits, and more importantly, analyze them in a thoughtful and well-spoken way.

The announcement for the new channel is a great example of that, one step removed from poker itself. He spends 13 tweets explaining what kept him away from YouTube for so long, and what finally convinced him to jump into the game now. As usual for Galfond, it is a deep dive into motivations and personal barriers.

His first step into the YouTube world is an interesting discussion of downswings and bad runs on the poker felt. While Galfond has an almost unquestioned status as one of the greatest players in the game, even beasts run bad from time to time, and Galfond’s wisdom on something that all players will experience to one degree or another is invaluable.

More than that, his humble, straight-forward style is perfect for the topic, and for this style of “talking-head” exploration of deeper topics. His style is engaging without being flashy, and really allows the listener to focus on the message rather than the messenger, something that extends to nearly every video product Galfond stars in.

If you are experiencing a downswing now, or still have painful memories of your last one, Galfond’s quiet but engaging exploration of the topic from psychological and mathematical angles is a great place to start trying to come to terms with that. But on a larger note, this first video in what looks to be a continuing series is a shot across the bow to other poker creators, just reminding us that Galfond crushes pretty much everything he touches.

In this particular case, however, rather than crushing souls and taking money at the poker table, he crushes the educational game, and the poker public will only benefit from Galfond’s latest “beast-mode” endeavour. Catch the first edition from Galfond as he examines downswings at the link below, and be sure to hit Subscribe for all his future content as well.

While the live portion of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas is now underway, the international component of the online portion of this year’s series completed in September at GGPoker. Over 33 events, more than $90 million was collected and handed out between August 1 and September 12 at the international partner for WSOP.

The 2021 international series was smaller than 2020, but that is hardly a surprise, with the 2020 event happening amidst a global lockdown and an unprecedented surge in online gaming activity. From the outset, the 2021 WSOP Online at GGPoker was smaller, with only 33 events compared to 54 in 2020.

That means that on a per-event basis, the 2021 series was nearly exactly the same size as 2020, with both collecting about $2.73 million per event on average. Average entries were down a bit this year, coming in at about 87% of the 2020 fields.

In an unusual and unprecedented year for the WSOP, the international online events were a success with $4.35 million in rake collected along with more than $600,000 in fees. That more than covered the $563,000 in overlay the operator had to cover, and meant the series as a whole looks to have turned a significant profit.

Check out our detailed look at the series over at pokerfuse to get the story behind the numbers.

GG WSOP Bracelet Series Overview

• Total Bracelet Events 33
• Prize Money Awarded $90,175,863
• Avg Prize Pool per Tournament $2,732,602
• Total Entries 127,969
• No. of Seven Figure Prize Pool 26 (79%)
• Rake Generated $4,350,955
• Admin Fee Collected $617,887
• Total Overlay $563,000 (Main Event)
• Net Profit $4,405,841

Poker is card game, but as everyone who plays the game at more than the most basic level knows, you don’t always have to have the best cards to win the pot. Understanding when and how to put in a bluff is at least as important to successful poker as understanding when you are beat or when you are ahead in a hand.

Chris Hanson from Poker Night in America (PNIA) hosts a look back at some of the biggest and best bluffs ever pulled off on the program. Included in this recap is a seven-deuce bluff from Kelly Minkin, and Sam Abernathy putting the moves on Mike Dentale and later on Cate Hall. Antonio Esfandiari also stars on the wrong end of a couple of the clips.

If you love watching players squirm when put to tough decisions, this video is the one for you. It’s a nice reminder that in this beautiful game, “the best hand” isn’t always actually the best hand.

Daniel “Dnegs” Negreanu is no stranger to winner’s photos over his long career, but the last few years the live wins have been harder to find. In fact, going into the summer of 2021, DNegs was looking for his first win since 2013. Now, thanks to recent Poker GO Tour events, he’s put all that behind him with two wins.

The first came in July when he broke the drought with a win at the Poker GO Cup, on his way to winning the points race for the whole Cup. Now he’s added a title from the recent 2021 Poker Masters event from Poker GO.

No doubt he was happy to get that monkey off his back, and the timing couldn’t have been better. He bagged the latest win in September in the run-up to the 2021 WSOP, and he’ll surely have another bracelet on his mind now that he’s back in the win column in big live games.

Head over to CardPlayer.com for a great run-down of Negreanu’s most recent win.