2013 WSOP Circuit Kicks Off with Charity Tournament for United Way
Kick-Off the Chicago WSOP Circuit at the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Indiana with a Charity Event benefiting the Lake Area United Way.
Windy City Poker Championship hosts Jason Finn and Kirk Fallah will be emceeing this year's event in The Venue at the Chicago Horseshoe in Hammond, on Wednesday night, October 16, 2013. The official first event of the 2013 WSOP Circuit at the Horseshoe begins Thursday, October 17.
The event has a buy-in of $125, with an immediate "rebuy" available for $25. The initial buy-in and rebuy together gives players 4000 starting chips. Players who register through Chicago Poker Club, by filling in the form at the right (or here), will receive their $25 initial rebuy for free! Additionally, one lucky CPC.net registrant will have their name drawn at the event, and their buy-in will be refunded to them.
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Prizes
First, second, and third place finishers will receive a $1675 Main Event seat at the WSOP Circuit. Additional prizes include a championship bracelet from Albert's Jewelers, an Apple iPad, an Amazon Kindle Fire, golf packages, and myriad gift certificates to area businesses.
Structure
The tournament structure is available for download in PDF format.
Registration
In order to receive your complimentary rebuy, and to be eligible to win your free buy-in, the registration process requires two steps. First, complete the registration form here at the right. Then, complete the United Way's online registration and mail your check made payable to Lake Area United Way, to Lake Area United Way 221 W. Ridge Rd. Griffith, IN 46319. Their phone number is 219-923-2302.
Questions
If you have additional questions about the event itself, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Windy City Poker Championship Spring 2013 Championship Now Online
After a long wait, the 2013 Spring Championship conclusion (episode 3 of 3) is now online at WindyCityPokerChampionship.com (brought to you by ChicagoPokerClub.net.)
Aaron Massey, Mike Steinberg, Pawel Andrzejewski, Chris Moneymaker, Nick Brancato, and Donald Bates remain. Who will take down the title and the top prize?
Click the image to watch the exciting finale!
Beware the Pokerbot - The Poker Player That Can't Be Beaten
This post originally appeared on the geekchicago.com blog and is being re-printed here with permission.
Technology is infiltrating life in ways we may not even expect. One of those areas is the poker arena.
Technology may have just found a way to "solve" poker. What does that mean? Consider a simple game like tic-tac-toe. If player A does one move, then with the goal of winning in mind, player B has an optimal move, guaranteed to put him on a path to victory (or in this game, at least a "draw".) It is a "solved" game.
Poker is way more complicated than that, though... right?
Yes, and no. It seems that this new "pokerbot" artificial intelligence that provides the "brains" over 200 Texas Hold 'Em Heads Up machines across the US basically always comes out on top. The pokerbot uses knowledge that it has from billions of staged rounds of poker, fed through neural networks (essentially a complex decision making formula), resulting in an unpredictable but virtually unbeatable poker player.
In fact, it took the developers 2 years to dumb down the system enough so that players wouldn't walk away. Even so, its estimated that only 100 around the world will be able to beat it on a regular basis.
...you and I are probably not one of those 100. But it's worth a try, right?
We reached out to Dave Thornton, the CEO of Skill in Games, a company dedicated to separating out the luck component from the game of poker to measure a player's relative skill quotient to understand whether or not the game has truly been solved. When asked, "is the game of poker solved", he had this to say:
Yes in the sense that [Artificial Intelligence engines] exist which can profitably play heads-up limit hold'em against tough opponents. No in the more formal sense - as far as I know, we haven't fully enumerated a game theory optimal strategy for heads-up limit hold'em.