Ricki Lake Makes Poker Final
TV star Ricki Lake has progessed to a poker final.

Exciting television for poker enthusiasts on NBC
The poker legend Doyle Brunson recently saw success at the prestigious NBC Heads-Up Championship 2010 ^Doyle Brunson was one of sixty four players invited to take place in NBC’s Heads Up Championship 2010 which is soon to be aired on NBC ^Mary Ashton^^After sixty years in the game Doyle Brunson can still hold his own against younger professionals^NBC’s Heads-Up Championship 2010

The main and most obvious different is players aren’t face to face contact and sitting directly across from one another. This makes it impossible to observe body language and other player’s reactions which can be used in conventional poker to gain a prospective or an idea of the opposing player’s current hand.

Players instead have to adapt when the game is played online and instead of observing reactions face to face, they instead have to focus on players reaction times, the speed they’re playing and betting patterns. Poker is a game at which you have to adapt to even online. Another main difference is the speed of the game and the rate of play.

Online players have the option to play multiple tables at once while in a physical casino you are limited to sitting at one table as it would be impossible to be two places at once. Therefore, while being able to play more tables, your chances of earning are increased and how much you can earn are increased.

A good number of online poker rooms now offer poker schools online that offer players the chance to learn the basics and speed up the rate at which they learn the game for beginners. In an online poker room, you can click a button and more money is added to your budget and you can even go into practice rooms with pretend or fake money before you go onto actual playing tables. Rooms like these are great for novices so they can learn the basics of the game and become better before risking actual money.

Also, the limits that are associated with a lot of online poker rooms are a great deal less than table limits at conventional poker casinos. On an online poker room, players find limits sometimes as low as 1 cent while at most conventional poker rooms the limits could be set to 1 dollar.

So when you compare online poker to conventional poker, it all adds up depending on certain aspects such as, do you have enough money to travel to or spend on a conventional casino and are you experienced enough to play at a real casino. A lot of people who go to conventional casinos are not novices and they’ve been doing this for a very long time, so unless you have a very keen sight on poker, I would recommend learning more about the game and sitting out of face to face poker unless you have a lot of money to spend as a novice.

On the other hand, you can risk less money and get the Vegas feel right there in your living room and still win money but without ever leaving your home. This makes this convenient for people who don’t have enough money to go anywhere or people who have a busy schedule allowing them to play as well.

The Luckbox Last Longer Challenge
Let’s start with the breaking news: PokerStars will be adding $2000 to the Luckbox Last Longer Challenge prize pool. Let me say that again. The awesome folks at PokerStars are once again showing their support for the WPBT by adding $2000 to the prize pool for the Luckbox Last Longer Challenge at the Winter Classic (and find it on Facebook). Let’s just say this little contest of pride and wills just grew into something awesome. Now let’s get to the details. With this much money now at stake, we’re putting down some rules. Read carefully! Teams of three must be formed before the tournament begins and submitted to The Luckbox. Team entries can be left in the comments of Up For Poker on THIS POST, sent to cusephenom -@- yahoo DOT com, or done in person in Las Vegas. The Luckbox will be at the tournament site at Noon, one hour prior to the scheduled start time of the tournament. Live registration ends at 12:45pm, 15 minutes prior to scheduled start time of the tournament. Sorry, no exceptions. Each team requires a $30 entry fee ($10 per person). If you are unable to find two teammates prior to the end of the Last Longer registration, you are ineligible to participate in the Last Longer competition. It is each team members’ responsibility to notify The Luckbox (or his representative) upon his/her elimination. If notification is not made at the time of bust out, the player will be assigned the same amount of points he or she would have earned for busting out first. At the end of the event, each players’ bust out number will be added together and the lowest total finishes first, 2nd lowest finishes second, etc. If two teams finish with the same total, the tie-breaker is the team with the top finishing player. From the added prize pool: $1,500 to winning team ($500 apiece) and then $500 for for second place team ($170 for top player on team, $165 for other two players). The added prize pool will be transferred into your PokerStars account. From the entry fee prize pool: 50% to the winning team, 30% to 2nd place and 20% to 3rd place. The entry fee prize pool will be handed out at the conclusion of the tournament. (Astin asked in the comments about people with no PokerStars account. First, it’s free and easy to sign up! Second, you can provide us with whatever Stars account you wish if you’re on the winning team. So if you want it deposited into someone else’s account, we can arrange that.) Any and all disputes will be handled by The Luckbox and thisisnotapril. All decisions are final. By paying an entry fee, you are agreeing to the rules set forth here. We want to make sure that the great people at PokerStars know how much we appreciate this so when you talk about the Luckbox Last Longer Challenge (we’re going to call it the L-cubed), please give PokerStars some love (your blog, twitter, facebook, etc.). If you have any questions about this, leave them in the comments or email me at the email address listed above!

The Brink of Fantasy Football History
I’m not sure how it’s happened, but it has. Otis, G-Rob and The Luckbox (that’s me) are all above .500 ten weeks into the fantasy football season and all have a legitimate shot to make the playoffs. Doesn’t sound like a big deal? Well, let’s take a look back at history. In the past 5 seasons, our three teams have a collective 4 playoff appearances and no Super Bowl crowns. We have a collective record of 89-104-3. We have a total of 5 winning seasons among us. Of course, Otis does a lot to bring that total down. All I’ll say about his career fantasy football record is that his only winning season is the year we played XFL Fantasy Football. I’m serious. He won the Super Bowl. But this year, the three of us are bunched at the top of the Carolina Division. I’m at 8-2 and Otis and G-Rob are both at 6-4. If the playoffs started this week, G-Rob and I would both be in the playoffs. Otis trails G-Rob by just two points for the final playoff spot and both of them trail the 3rd place team by a game. Of course, there’s still 4 regular season weeks left for something to go wrong. The only thing guaranteed is that at least one of us will be in the playoffs this year. Which sure beats last year when we were a combined 15-26-1!

Five Rules for Picking Your Bracket
If you’re like 99% of the adult population in America, you’re working on your NCAA bracket this week (due by Noon ET on Thursday). And if you get it just right, there might even be some money in it for you. Here are five rules for picking your bracket that will give you an advantage over anyone who hasn’t read this: Number 1: Don’t trust the SEC. Only three SEC teams made the Big Dance this year and only two of them were even worthy (Miss. St. won the SEC tourney to “earn” an automatic bid). Expect all three SEC teams to go out in the first round. MSU is terrible and lost to just about every out of conference opponent they faced. Tennessee has a nice out of conference win against Marquette, but that’s it. They lost to Gonzaga twice, Temple, Kansas and Memphis. In conference, UT struggled against the “better” teams like Kentucky, LSU and Auburn. And LSU’s out of conference schedule was a joke. The “big” win was against a mediocre Wash. St. team. They lost to Texas A&M, Utah and Xavier. Pathetic. The SEC is terrible. I wish there was a stronger way to state this. Number 2: Trust the Big East They’ve been the strongest conference in college basketball all year long. There’s a reason 9 Big East teams were ranked going into the conference schedule. It’s because the Big East generally beat up on other conferences. Georgetown and Notre Dame were top 10 teams before they started facing other Big East teams. Here’s a look at some Big East out of conference wins: Pittsburgh: Florida St., Siena UCONN: Wisconsin, Gonzaga, Michigan Syracuse: Memphis, Kansas, Florida The Big East team I actually worry about is Louisville. Perhaps they figured out how to flip a switch because they were pretty bad early in the season with losses to Western Kentucky, Minnesota and UNLV. They’re hot now, though, so it’s hard to bet against them. Number 3: The Hilltoppers are ready for an upset They’ve already gotten a signature win over Louisville this year and have also tested themselves against teams like Georgia, Florida St. and Mississippi St. They won’t be intimidated by Illinois. And the Illini will likely be without their best perimeter defender which is good news for guard-heavy Western Kentucky. The Hilltoppers three guards all average more than 12 ppg and hit more than 36% of their 3-point shots. Illinois’ only chance is to slow down the game and use their 7-footer. It won’t work. Number 4: Utah will not be upset by Arizona Listen to the oddsmakers and a Wildcats win in this game wouldn’t actually be an upset. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why anyone would expect the Wildcats to win. They are far and away the worst at large team in the Big Dance. It took a win over a terrible Stanford team to close the regular season just to get to .500 in a relatively weak Pac 10. They were 11-8 on Jan. 21st and closed the season losing 5 out of 6. A seven game winning streak over mostly mediocre teams saved their season. The Utes’ Luke Nevill will neutralize the Wildcats’ best weapon, Jordan Hill. And Arizona will go home. Number 5: The four #1 seeds won’t make the Final Four, but they’ll all be close It’s a lock. All four #1 seeds will make the Elite Eight. The bumps they’ll encounter aren’t nearly big enough to stop them. The only possible upset is Wake over Louisville. Other than that, it’s a cakewalk. The Final Four is a different story, however. Louisville faces a tough matchup with Michigan St. (the only legitimate Big 10 threat in the tourney). Pitt faces a tough matchup with Duke or even Nova, who beat Pitt by 10 in the regular season. UConn will be the most popular pick to fail because they have a run-in with Memphis planned. And I wouldn’t want to be UNC looking at a matchup with Player of the Year Blake Griffin and Oklahoma or maybe even a strong Syracuse squad. If you’re looking for a repeat of last year’s chalk, you’ll be disappointed. I can’t tell you which #1 (or #1s) will fail to get there (after all, I’m facing some of you in bracket challenges), but I can tell you the chalk ain’t happening!