There’s no cricket tournament quite like the Ashes and who doesn’t want to beat England to a pulp every single time? To celebrate the legendary series of cricket, 888.com have launched their own brand of poker to commemorate the mother of all cricket events for Australians.

This will definitely be the first ever Ashes series to be played for poker. The unique event will be televised on Sky Sportsand will be played by English and Australian cricketers, much like the real Ashes. There will be a series of five “Test” matches in the tournament, except, this time the Ashes will be battled on felt rather than grass. The teams will be playing games of No Limits Texas Hold’em Poker.

Former fast bowler Darren Gough will be the captain of the England Ashes Team while the one and only Shane Warne will take up the captain’s mantle for the Australian side. For the hybrid poker-cricket fans, 888 is offering one lucky qualifier a chance to gain a spot on either side to play the Poker Ashes with these cricketers. The 2 lucky winners (one for each side) will get an all-expenses paid trip to play the tournament in the UK in June 2009.

The winner of the Poker Ashes Series 2009 will receive $50,000 USD donated to the charity of their choice, which depending on the winner will be the Shane Warne Foundation (for Australia) or the Professional Cricket Association (for England).

The show will be telecast in Australia on June 7 at 8 p.m. AEST.

There’s no cricket tournament quite like the Ashes and who doesn’t want to beat England to a pulp every single time? To celebrate the legendary series of cricket, 888.com have launched their own brand of poker to commemorate the mother of all cricket events for Australians.

This will definitely be the first ever Ashes series to be played for poker. The unique event will be televised on Sky Sportsand will be played by English and Australian cricketers, much like the real Ashes. There will be a series of five “Test” matches in the tournament, except, this time the Ashes will be battled on felt rather than grass. The teams will be playing games of No Limits Texas Hold’em Poker.

Former fast bowler Darren Gough will be the captain of the England Ashes Team while the one and only Shane Warne will take up the captain’s mantle for the Australian side. For the hybrid poker-cricket fans, 888 is offering one lucky qualifier a chance to gain a spot on either side to play the Poker Ashes with these cricketers. The 2 lucky winners (one for each side) will get an all-expenses paid trip to play the tournament in the UK in June 2009.

The winner of the Poker Ashes Series 2009 will receive $50,000 USD donated to the charity of their choice, which depending on the winner will be the Shane Warne Foundation (for Australia) or the Professional Cricket Association (for England).

The show will be telecast in Australia on June 7 at 8 p.m. AEST.

You will see some changes to the site in the coming days as we look to change things up a bit. We will be adding an Aussie Millions 2009 section where you can see how you can qualify for this event online. We will be also covering the event when it starts in January. So if you have friends down there and want to be kept up to date with everything, you can get all the info you need here.

That’s all I wanted to say for now. I would like to apologise to our visitors that have been regularly checking the site and haven’t had any updates for a little while.

Cheers everyone

One of the biggest reasons why I didn’t post last week though was because of the WSOP Main Event. In case you didn’t see, we were following the Aussie poker players carefully on their journey towards the final table. The two best performances of the Main event came from Mark Vos and David Saab. Vos was cruising along nicely for a large portion of the tourney but made a bad read on the final hand of Day 5. He was getting re-raised all day and decided to push his 1.5 million chips with AK. His opponent had aces and mark was gone. A bad read on the last hand of the day from a guy that was playing really solid poker. Unlucky Mark but congrats on the 80th place finish.

David Saab has been on fire of late. He recently won the APPT Manila so he is in good form. He wasn’t even going to attend the Main Event because he feels that it is –EV when you take into account all the costs involved. He eventually got staked by Tino Lechich who also ran well in the tourney. It proved to be a great move because Saab finished in 46th place and pocketed over 130k. He was desperately unlucky and he lost with a flopped straight to a flush on the turn and then was knocked out with aces vs a weak hand that flopped trips.

Well done to the Aussie contingent at the 2008 WSOP as you all represented well. Hopefully we’ll see more good results from Australian poker players in upcoming tournaments. I also have to make a special mention to Shane Warne for making the 3rd day of play. He almost made the money which is a pretty good effort. Good work mate.

Moving on from the Australian poker players, the best of the rest of the on Day 1C was Norway’s Henning Granstad. He accumulated the most chips so far in the WSOP Main Event and will start Day 2 with 242 950. Other notable entries on Day 1C were Nenad Medic, David Singer, JC Tran, Mike “The Mouth” Matusow, TJ Cloutier, the famous Larry Flynt and PokerStars‘ Chris Moneymaker.

With one more day left of the Day 1’s the 2008 WSOP Main Event is shaping up to be one of the biggest in history, if not the biggest. The team at pokershark.com.au will continue to keep you informed of the results of the Aussies competing. Check back for a recap of all the action from Day 1D.

Negreanu was unlucky when he was dumped out of the tournament with a set, losing to a higher set. In a day that saw many big names prosper and fail, Ben Sarnoff finished the day ahead of the rest of the pack with 177 500 chips. There were 636 players that will be coming back for the second day of action.

The best of the Aussies playing on Day 1b was Australian Poker player Tony Hachem. The brother of 2005 WSOP Main Event winner Joe Hachem, Tony finished the day with 76 050 chips to put himself in a solid position going into the action on day 2. Billy ‘The Croc” Argyros is continiuing his solid play at the WSOP as he finished the day on 30 450 chips. Other good perfromances include Julian Powell on 71 100 and Leo Boxell on 31 000. Good luck to all Aussies left in the event.

Day 1c sees some more Australian poker players in action. Jeff Lisandro, Tony G, Mel Judah and Joe Hachem are some of the Aussies in action. A full report on their performance will be given folloing the conclusion of Day 1c.

I’ll talk you through the hand. I have about $650 in front of me and there is a raise to about $25 preflop from early position. This is a pretty standard raise and will no doubt attract at least 5-6 callers. I call from early position with J 9 suited. The flop comes down J 7 8 with two hearts. I bet $30 with and I get two callers. I’m not worried at all at this point because of the excessively loose play at the casino. The turn card comes down and it is another Jack. I check at this point to look weak and to get a bluff out of one of them, possibly a bet from a weak jack. The first player bets $40 and the next guy calls. I think for a fair while and then raise to $125 to get them to pay for their draws. They both call, and I’m still not that worried because the play at the casino is pretty terrible. The river card comes down and is a 9 of hearts giving me a boat and possibly giving them a straight or a flush. I push my stack and they both call.

What do you think they had? Anyway, the first caller had a flopped straight. Yes a flopped straight! He didnt raise, go over the top at any point and let both of us hit. The second guy rivered a flush that he was chasing the whole time. He could have easily got out of trouble on the turn because I was representing a made boat already. In his defense he had already called a bet and was priced in. But at the end of the day he gave me about $400 with a pair on the board.

What’s the moral of this story? The cash games at the casino are really that juicy. Only a small portion of the players know what they’re doing and you can pretty much control how the game goes. This is the reason why I have been playing more cash games at the casino. The reward is just too good to give up. You get paid off big time when you get a hand and most of the time you will leave with more money in your pockets.

Lets hope there are more stories like this to come from Australia’s soft casinos.

I would like to keep this blog as informal as possible so I can write more enjoyable stories and experiences. I will keep this blog updated regularly with at least one post a week. On the average week I will update this blog 2-3 times a week.

For those that dont already know me, my name is Nick and I currently live in Brisbane, Australia. I play a fair bit of online poker, mainly tournaments. If I want to play cash games I usually go to the Treasury casino and play 2.5/5 on the $250 max buy-in table (not much on offer at the Treasury). I mainly play no-limit Hold ‘em but I like to play Omaha Hi cash games online.

You can catch me online playing tournaments, usually in the early hours of the morning on PokerStars when the bigger guaranteed prize pool tournaments are on for Aussies. Look forward to sharing with everyone on the pokershark.com.au blog!