In the past couple of days I've had an issue with Bovada and because of this issue I've decided to withdraw all of my funds on the site and never give them any action again. I want to start by saying I used to be one of the biggest fans of Bodog.  The player base was fantastic and their customer support was top notch.   A couple of weeks ago I was watching the NCAA tournament and playing a few lower stakes tourneys online on Bovada and Lock Poker.  I jumped into a satellite on Bovada for their 100k tournament that they have every Sunday at 4PM eastern.  I ended up winning this satellite and was given a ticket as Bovada does when you win a satellite.  I didn't think much of it as I've collected multiple 100k tickets before [More...]

Florida poker is BOOMing!!  I've basically made the decision there is really no reason for me to leave the state of Florida for live poker anymore.  There are tourney series going on somewhere in the state at just about any time with a lot even overlapping.  I was just down in Fort Lauderdale for some of the WPT prelims at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino.  I played three events and managed to go 20/221, 10/94, and 19/996.  So I had two cashed and a stone cold bubble.  While the cashes weren't anything life changing it always feels good to be making deep runs consistently and I'm feeling even more confidence in my live game coming off Final Tabling the WPT Main event at the Tampa Hard Rock in December.  As much as I love traveling the fields are just [More...]

As everyone knows from my prior articles about the best value tournaments, I'm always on the lookout for ways to maximize my return on my money.  I've been playing a little bit of poker on Bodog and recently came upon this promotion they are having.  http://www.bodog.eu/play-now/superbowl-freeroll/optin.html.  Basically if you bet opt in to the promotion and bet $25 in a given week on NFL you get entered into a $5,000 freeroll on the following Wednesday.  So I did this for week 2 of NFL and finished 23rd out of around 230 people and got paid something around $40.  I did the same for week 3 of NFL and ended up winning the $5,000 freeroll out of 240 players for just under $700.  The added incentive is the winners of all 17 weeks of freerolls get entered into a championship freeroll [More...]

Over the last few months I’ve gotten the opportunity to play more live poker then I have at any other time in my life.  (Thanks DOJ for that.)  While it has been refreshing to get out of the house a lot more and be much more social, it has also been quite an upsetting experience.  While playing live poker we have to deal with people from all walks of life.  There are also dealers and floor people who get paid to ensure the games we play run much smoother.  While the experience of playing so much live has been nice it’s also been disappointing to see the way my fellow players treat one another and the way they treat the dealers and floor people.  I can’t even begin to count how many times I’ve watched other players get mad at [More...]

Sadly, the summer is about to come to a close.  I had an amazing time being able to live with all the TPE guys all summer long and despite our lackluster results I feel as if I improved a lot as a player.  I feel like I played pretty well but didn't run the best in some key spots.  I still have one shining moment left in the WSOP Main Event which I will be starting my journey to November on day 1D which is Sunday the 10th.  Last year was the first time I've played the main event and there really isn't another tourney anything like it.  I will be doing updates every level on twitter @cougars4444.  Hopefully all of TPE nation is doing great and I look forward to getting home and getting really back involved in the [More...]

Well, things haven't gotten off to the start I had hoped for.  So far I've played four Venetian events and two WSOP daily deepstack events and still haven't had a cash.  I do have two bubbles so far including a stone-cold bubble yesterday in the daily deepstack at the WSOP.  I made a few mistakes in the first tourney and I think it had a lot to do with rust having not played any tourneys since Black Friday.  Since then I've played pretty well just not getting that big flip or hold when it counts.  Tomorrow is my first actual bracelet WSOP event and I'm sure it's going to be a massive field with two start days.  I'm really looking forward to it. The house is a blast BigDog cracks on everyone about every 90 seconds and the banter that [More...]

It’s been quite a while since I’ve done a blog and I just wanted to let everyone in on an update on what has been going on.  If you didn’t know I hit the bad beat jackpot on Ultimate Bet about three weeks ago.  Here is a link to the interview I did with PocketFives about the BBJ win: http://www.pocketfives.com/articles/cougars4444-hits-ub-com-bad-beat-jackpot-159-500-585968/ It was life changing money and was one of the craziest things that has ever happened to me. Two weeks ago I got a phone call from my brother on a Wednesday morning letting me know that my dad had been taken by ambulance to the hospital.  Around thirty minutes after that I got a phone call from my brother hysterically crying with the news my dad had passed away at the age of 54.  It was a complete shock [More...]

FTOPS is right around the corner (as it seems it always is).  Going off my last article on the Top 10 Best Valued Online Poker Tournaments in the $10-$55 Range, I’m going to go over what I feel are the best FTOPS satellites you can play to take a shot at hitting a big score or building your bankroll with these tourneys. One nice thing about any FTOPS tourney is that you can win your seat in a satellite and then go ahead and unregister and get $T which you can use to play any tourney on FTP.  With a lot of the daily FTOPS satellites they sometimes change times so I will leave those out but will focus on the format that I’ve had the most success with and feel are the most profitable. $26 satellites to FTOPS #1 [More...]

Being a “Value Nit” is something my poker friends tend to make fun of me for more than anything else. I am always looking out for the tourneys in which I feel I have the greatest expectation. On a typical Sunday, when there are a ton of great major tourneys running, you will still see me playing the smaller stuff. It’s because there is so much value in them that I can’t seem to pass them up. I think one of the underrated things in a players’ success is maximizing the value of the tourneys they play. At the lower stakes, every tournament tends to be on the softer side, but some are more so than others. Here is my top ten list of the best value tournaments in the $10-$55 range(I only used FTP and Stars in my list [More...]

I’m so excited to be a member of the TPE family.  It is such a great honor to get the opportunity to work with such great pros, I’m very excited for what the future holds. I’m mainly going to focus on lower and mid-stakes tourneys as videos.  If anyone has any suggestions on various tourneys they would like to see turned into a video I will try my best to accommodate any requests.  It’s going to be a great month of September, we have WCOOP as well as MFTOPS and that means lots of huge fields and lots of money to be made.  Make sure to be on the lookout for an article I’m writing about the Top Ten Best Valued Tournaments in the $10-$55 Range. Thanks again to everyone for all of the warm welcomes to the team and [More...]