While Main Event in Monte Carlo is just getting started (starting days are over), super high roller have already finished their draught. Tournaments with buy-ins of €100,000 and €50,000 have already been played. And famous Belarusian online Players were on the stage in both of them.

Let’s start with the stage itself. Finishing stage of the 11^th season of European Poker Tour is in Monaco till 8^th of May. 78 tournaments are scheduled! This is one of the biggest poker fests in history (if not the biggest) when we are speaking about the number of tournaments.

The main stage is occupied by the most expensive tournaments - Super High Roller and Main Event with €10,600 buy-in.

Today we are speaking about big boys.

Why in the most cases poker and casino games are being looked at different angles? That is because there are completely different principles in poker. There is no “Cash-in” button, where you supposed to press for coins to fall down. There is no jackpot you’re supposed to wait for.

Today’s “Poker Notepad” is quite unusual. Usually we’re trying to deal with practice and today we’ll talk about theory. Just because it’s important. Well, theory isn’t that important all the time, but in this case it is.

We are going to use thoughts of Ed Miller, professional poker player, author of many books, poker couch and a man who has university degrees in several fields. Kind of person to listen to.

Inexpensive tournament series in various corners of our crazy planet – that’s the nearest future of poker. This summer there will take place $565 Colossus tournament with guaranteed $5,000,000 at WSOP, and just now Full Tilt Poker started sponsoring IPT.

For many years live poker was the rich and the daring’s lot. Even World Series is a striking example of it. For a long time there were no tournaments under $1,000 at WSOP schedule. Whoever heard of it: giving the bracelet for such nonsense!

So far many old-timers (hello, Mike Sexton!) are dissatisfied with the course World Series has taken. Their opinion, of course, can be understood. Even more: we really want to agree with it.

The Roman Empire exists nowadays. No, the shores of Mediterranean Sea are not under its power. In the beginning of the third millennium it consists of tens of poker clubs spread all over Italy.

Why do we recall The Roman Empire? Well, because it was the start of gambling on this territory. Legionnaires dealt with boredom with the only way possible – by playing a game of Ludus Duodecim Scriptorum (backgammon predecessor).

It was a long time ago. The first casino in Italy appeared in the first half of the 17^th century. A hundred years before that some game recalling todays bingo was popular.

Poker is a world full of personalities. Some of them are altruistic, some are clever and educated, and many can’t live without the game. However, most of the players are famous for playing poker in the first place. Our today’s hero is not only one of the noble cash players, but is well known for his temper.

“My father left my mom when I was 3 years old. She has married another man two years later. My stepfather got sick when I was 8 and died when I was 10. I don’t communicate with my father for over 20 years and I don’t see my mother as well.

I’ve been living alone since I am 15…”

This is a very brief description about his childhood from Viffer himself. His nickname sounds better than his real name, isn’t it? All his friends call him that.

It is only 2-hour flight from Macau to the Philippines capital Manila.  But there are no fewer differences between these places than between any twin brothers – that means plenty. At least if we’re talking about poker development. Ivey, Dwan, Cates, Yong, Mo and many others started to visit Manila more and more often.

October last year new poker room of Solaire Casino in the city Paranac (Manila agglomeration) hosted World Poker Tour stage for the first time. There were two tens of quite huge tournaments, including $2,200 Main Event and $25,500 High Roller.

Hello again, Montenegro. We’ve seen each other already. Only now it’s Splendid Casino and new title -- World Poker Tour. From April, 3 till April, 12 there was a second stage of beloved by many players WPTN Montenegro.

It seems like yesterday we’ve written about RPT Montenegro, which was remembered because of Golden Girls and series of “problems”.

And once again Montenegro. This is this spring’s capital of European poker, and Russian as well. There is a lot of Russians at the stages in Montenegro.

Such giants as Dmitry Vitkind, Vasiliy Firsov, Gleb Kovtunov, Alexander Lahov, Sergei Rybachenko, Alexandr Dovzhenko, Nikolai “NikolasDLP” Prokhorsky and many others. Even EPT Malta champion Jean Montury came here.

Despite continuing decrease of earnings of Chinese casinos big cash game in Macau is rolling full speed (well, almost as good as always). Sometimes stacks of players consist of tens of million dollars and there is not enough room for all the chips.

Unreal game in Macau isn’t going anywhere. The best pros in the world together with the most powerful and richest businessman are still there. They don’t talk about it much. Players won’t benefit from it, especially in modern day realities of today’s China: there is big war against corruption – almost everybody is getting tested.

But some info comes through. And here it is.

Another Russian Poker Tour has ended with some interesting stuff going on. There were careless dealers, naked ladies, cancelled events and, certainly, cool tournaments. Montenegro, specifically town Budva, hotel casino “Queen of Montenegro” has hosted the event.

There were some interesting headlines in the Montenegrin stop of RPT: World Poker & Party Series, Belarus Poker Tour, Pokerfest, Pokerdom and some other “brands”.

RPT Main Event with €200,000 guaranteed and WPPS Main Event with €125,000 guaranteed were meant to be the biggest events of the series. Meanwhile, guaranteed prize was supposed to be €150,000 and has been reduced “due to unexpected denial to cooperate with WPPS of one of the major partners (PokerFest)”.

The first stage of European Poker Tour was a great success. Beside some big tournaments, Italian victory in Global Poker Masters and other interesting features, we witnessed a birth of the next poker pro – Dzmitry Urbanovich from Poland.

The stage was played by Poland perfectly well. And that is understatement. The small poker country came on top in very first High Roller tournament with €25,000 buy-in.

Two Polish guys made the final table – Urbanovich and Piotr Franczak. And that is cool already. Both of them are unknowns. Franczak will eventually make it to Top-6, and Urbanovich will go heads-up against very dangerous American Connor Drinan (You might recall him from losing with aces vs. aces in Big One For One Drop).

In defiance of all the predictions Team Italy has won the first Global Poker Masters cup, becoming the strongest poker team in the world. And in the Finals they were competing with Russia, not with the USA or Canada.

We wrote earlier about how the Day 1 of the team championship went on. Americans advanced straight to the semi-finals with confidence, British went off the distance and Ukrainian worked poker miracles.

The second day included few stages:

• first – heads up matches, team vs. team (one country goes busted);
• second – 6-max Sit-and-Go (two best teams go through to the finals);
• third – finals, five simultaneously played heads ups (the game continues up to three winnings).

The exhausting first day of Global Poker Masters ended up with the triumphant performance of Team USA, elimination of Team UK and heroic Ukrainians’ run. Today we expect to see the heads up series, 6-max Sit'n'Go and the final battle of two strongest teams.

«The Global Poker Masters is not just another poker event or another Sit-and-Go. It is about skill», – these are GPI Index founder Alex Dreyfus’ words.

Before the competitions started, he had said a lot – and others too, actually. Basically it was all the same: poker must become an international sport; money shouldn’t be the primary concern and so on.

On the top Russian players list he has the first place – $8,422,677. Annually he donates about 10% of his earning for the charities through his own charity organization. This multimillionaire and super high roller is Igor Kurganov.

In the modern poker Kurganov’s personality keeps aloof. One knows about him much less than would want to know. For example there’s no information about the early life of the German with the Russian background.

Streaming platform Twitch has recently been pretty active in poker sphere. New format was highly praised by PokerStars, 2+2 forums and Global Poker Index. Besides Twitch is perfect for poker clubs and live series.

First of all, what is Twitch. Well, this is a gaming site where gamers can stream (show) they gameplay. Let’s say there is Jeremy from San Francisco and Petya from Ivanovo playing Hearthstone, and their game can be seen by other people, they can communicate with each other and (that’s important) see the streamer through web cam. Those who missed live coverage  can watch it later.

In general you can stream everything you’d like (at least everything that can be recorded and translated through the monitor): someone carving, composing music or…playing poker in the club.

Real clubs and casinos have much bigger numbers of those. Those guys and dudes who open raise 10x and bet on every flop and turn. They are considered as bad players and awaited as warm spring day in the cold mornings of January. However, there is not much of players who know how to play against them.

“This man opens too wide and his raises are wild, he is fish anyways, so let’s have a party,” – this is pretty much all thoughts of players at the tables when they see another maniac. That is basically definition of what is a fish in poker.

The only problem is that they have no idea how to crush this poor fellow fish. Many make same mistakes and become another victim of this poker maniac.