Mercier’s Chinese Lesson; Poker and Football; Jaka’s Silence

Pros Open Up About Chinese Poker

Open-Face Chinese is undoubtedly the latest craze in poker. With Peter Jetten winning the PCA’s inaugural event a few days ago and Jason Mercier playing it any time he gets a chance, the community is now desperate to learn more about the game.

Such is the interest in the game that PokerStars decided to hold an Open-Face Chinese seminar during some downtime at the PCA recently.

Hosted by Lee Jones and featuring Jason Mercier and Shaun Deeb, the discussion outlined the evolution of the game, its basic premise and the some strategy considerations.

While Deeb and Mercier agreed that there’s no “correct” strategy, they do feel it’s a game that will soon become a staple tournament offering on the circuit.

Who knows, maybe in the future we’ll see the Global Poker Index introducing an Open-Face scoring system.

To read a summary of the seminar, click here.

Poker Site to Sponsor Football Match

Texas Ask’em, an online game combining trivia and poker, is set to sponsor an English football match.

The game, which requires players to answer a question at the start of each hand and the player, before competing in a standard hand of Texas Hold’em, has proved popular with  the poker community in recent months.

Following the company’s growth, Texas Ask’em will now sponsor AFC Wimbledon’s forthcoming match against Port Vale. Kicking off on January 24^th, the match will not only give the game exposure  inside the stadium, but on TV as well thanks to the presence of Sky Sports.

Being able to join forces with the world’s most popular sport and receive international TV exposure will not only benefit Texas Ask’em but poker in general. Indeed, the more players who are introduced to the game through partnerships such as this, the more the industry will continue to thrive.

Jaka Getting it Quietly

Faraz Jaka might be able to talk his opponents into making the wrong moves at the poker table, but in the next few weeks he’ll be giving up that skill.

Wanting to broaden his horizons, Jaka has decided to visit a Buddhist monastery off the coast of Thailand. As a resident on the island Faraz will live as the monks and embark on a 10 day bout of complete silence with them.

Although it sounds like just another crazy prop bet from a poker player with too much money, the highly ranked GPI player is actually doing to improve his spiritual side.

Jaka’s Twitter announcement was praised by Bertrand Grospellier who seemed keen to know what it’s like. Indeed, maybe we’ll see “Elky” undertaking such a feat in the near future.