Manage your tournament poker structure with an App

Recently decided to invest in a mac. Was worried about where to play, and as you know, and as I've written about in the past there is one online poker site, bwin, that takes care of us. In fact, it's always taken care of us. Frankly we mac users are a little cooler than pc users, or at least that's what Mac's advertising is selling.

So when I want to play poker on a mac, I'm obviously heading over to bwin's poker platform. What do I do when I'm playing live. Well, usually I use my phone to set an alarm to configure blinds and antes for a small tournament when I play at my boys house. Now, there's an app for that.

Bwin is again, on the bleeding edge and technology savvy freaks will enjoy their iPhones even more. Got an iPhone? Well, now when somebody is complaining about a blinds and antes structure you'll be the man, large and in charge. Now the tournament director is in your pants. (Get your mind out of the gutter)

The app, like all apps for the iPhone, is available in the Apple’s iTunes App Store. iTunes, is like a superstore. This is a far better App than your Peppermint Patty wallpaper. Search for Tournament Clock. Is it hard to use you may ask? And that's fine, I'll answer that...

No, the interface is just the opposite, it's dang near intuitive (as though it can guess what you are thinking--course that would be weird because then it would be aware you are thinking--iPhone's aren't that sophisticated... yet). Let's just say it is simple and easy to use.

Features include a toggle that allows you to adjust your home tournament's blind structure and level time limits. Or just jump right in using the “Quick Mode.” This is a blessing for all of us, who have difficulty setting our phones remembering which level is next or figuring out what the average chip stack is.

There is a wide latitude of things you can do with this intuitive, excuse me simple and easy to use interface. You'll be humming along in no time, probably right after you load it and it can't be any simpler to use. Us mac users and iphone owners can attest to how easy apple makes their computing and bwin has matched that simple sophistication. The best feature is being able to expand on the tournament organization and manipulate the variable controls.

You can go as far as creating profiles of the players, yeah, your friends. Put their pictures up there and what seat they are in, and then boot them when the bust out. Obviously, bwin is capable of putting together a solid product, with over 20 million customers who bet on sports, play poker, blackjack, roulette, and play casino games they are an industry leader. They've already diversified by streaming audio and video of events you can bet on, now they are taking their online poker knowledge to your live tournament game.

High Stakes Poker New Season

There is no better poker show than High Stakes Poker. You can see many of last years episodes and my reviews deep in this blog. So, you know how excited I've been for details of the sixth season of High Stakes Poker to be released. Now they are here. There is you usual variety of online poker players and live poker players and some new dynamics at play.

The first is a bit of the female touch. The new co-host is Kara Scott, who takes over for AJ Benza. Benza tipped us off of his depature in his blog "Benza Neat" and specualtion varied about who the new female would be. Vanessa Ruosso, Annie Duke, Vanessa Selbst? No Kara Scott, the pretty lady who went deep in back to back Main Events and won Norman Chad's heart on ESPN. She'll act like a field reporter co-opting the Poker After Dark format. Odd because the Poker After Dark format should have copied the High Stakes Poker format.

One is the best show on TV. The other is video Ambien. Poker After Dark is the Ambien if you haven't picked up on the fact you out cold before the opening credits every night. Scott's duties report from the High Stakes Poker suite, interviewing poker players about poker strategy, big hands and the table dynamics. We do no think she'll be interviewing the cocktail waitresses or the dealers.

There will be a minimum cash buy-in of $200,000.

A partial list of the players who are expected to compete this season (subject to change) includes:

Patrik Antonius
David Benyamine
Doyle Brunson
Tom Dwan
Eli Elezra
Antonio Esfandiari
Sammy George
Barry Greenstein
Phil Hellmuth
Andreas Hoivold
Phil Ivey
Mike Matusow
Allan Meltzer
Daniel Negreanu
Dennis Phillips
Lex Veldhuis
Yevgeniy Timoshenko