As of today, support for Full Tilt Poker, PartyPoker, iPoker and all the poker sites on these networks has been ceased. For the time being, the only supported site is PokerStars.
Support for Full Tilt Poker will be back shortly and we are hoping to be able to offer more options in the future.
Unfortunately we will not disclose the reasons behind this decision. The change is not final and we might support these sites in the future.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Best of luck,
It was an epic match that was talked about in the poker forums for months, an online cash game so big even national news sites reported the outcome. It resulted in a swing so huge that it lives in the annals of online poker as one of the biggest of all time.
In a five-hour session, Brian Hastings took more than $4 million off then-anonymous Isildur1, a Swede (later revealed to be Viktor Blom) taking shots at the biggest names in the business, playing at the highest of stakes. They played less than 3,000 hands.
$3 Million Under EV
Studies of the hand histories reported that Isilidur1 ran $3 million below expected value (EV) during the $500/$1K Omaha match. There is little doubt that a bad run such as that affected his mental state and likely deteriorated his ability to make quality decisions.
The two butted heads over and over, but a big moment in the match came when Hastings played a flopped draw aggressively against Blom’s two pair. Blom turned a third pair and put his money in against Hasting’s 19-out draw. A river card that completed Hasting’s straight sent a $683,000 pot his way.
While Blom was only a slight favorite when the money went in the middle, he was surely crushed when the luck didn’t go his way.
As Blom lost flip after flip, and Hastings continued to punish his opponent, Blom started to lose his composure. He certainly wasn’t playing his best game.
“I can promise this is the worst luck anyone had,”
Somewhere toward the end of the match, Hastings indicated he wanted to quit, and the signs of tilt in Isildur1 were evident. “This is not happening,” Blom typed.
Hastings Blom agreed to play 30 minutes longer (which actually turned out to be another hour), even after Isildur1 lost that $683k pot.
“I can promise this is the worst luck anyone had,” Blom typed, “take my last $$ … I don’t want it.”
To be sure, Blom had rapidly run his bankroll up in previous matches against the highest stakes and best players in the world. Before the match against Hastings, he seemed unstoppable.
Don’t let the same happen to you
Like in life, insurance at the poker table helps set our minds at ease. We can better overcome obstacles when we are prepared for the worst.
These days, online players have a service to help them maintain composure as they take chances and face the swings of bigger games: covering your bankroll at InsuredPlay.com.
We offer all-in equity insurance for online cash games played on the most popular poker sites. No matter the results, you are guaranteed to win the equity you had in the pot when the chips went in before the river. So even if you have a session where you lose flip after flip and run disastrously below EV yourself, you will be able to maintain your cool and fight through the bad run by still being able to make high quality decisions all while protecting your bankroll
Don’t let the swings get to you. The most important time to keep your cool is when taking shots that could boost your bankroll. Insure your cash and make sure your bankroll is not squandered. Sign up now!
Mike Matusow is well known by poker fans both for his antics at the table and for his results on the felt. Those that have followed the career of The Mouth are familiar with his frequent meltdowns at the table. The “Matusow Blow-up” always seemed to occur at the most inopportune times. Typically when deep in a tournament or in the biggest cash-game pots, Mike would wipe out all of his previous success with one bad play.
Tony G offers insurance to Mike
In Season 1 of the Full Tilt Poker Million Dollar Cash Game, Matusow found himself in a huge pot against Eric Seidel. Mike, self-proclaimed as “the unluckiest player in poker,” got it all in when he flopped top two pair against Seidel’s pocket Aces. As nearly a 3:1 favorite Matusow was offered insurance from Tony Guoga aka Tony G.
Seemingly frustrated by trying to figure out the correct price, Mike declined the offer to insure his hand. “Alright just go. Forget it,” Mike declared just before running 7s hit the turn and river counterfeiting his two pair and giving Seidel the $154,600 pot.
I would have took insurance if I could have
Later in an interview Matusow admitted, “They were offering me insurance. I didn’t even know what insurance meant, but I would’ve took it if I could’ve.”
With InsuredPlay, the decision of whether or not to cover a hand is made prior to the start of play, thereby eliminating the need to make a key decision when the pressure is on and mistakes are more likely. In addition, the process is automated so there is no need to try to figure out the odds. You will get the correct amount of insurance at the right price every time guaranteed.
If Matusow were playing online with InsuredPlay, not only would he have not gone broke on that hand but, he would have likely been able to keep his emotions in check and reduce the likelihood that his future play would have been affected by this bad beat.
Following the hand, with Matusow pacing back and forth telling anyone that would listen just how bad he runs in poker, Tony G remarked, “I told you I can give you insurance. You could have been safe; you could have been on a freeroll.”
Don’t make the same mistake. Be safe. Use InsuredPlay to protect your state of mind and your bankroll.
Today we’re launching an exiting feature. Every once in a while, you will see something like below on your cash games page.
When you share these surprise hands with your friends and followers on Facebook or Twitter, you will instantly receive the fee from this hand back to your account.
When one of your friends or followers clicks on the shared hand and joins InsuredPlay, you will be earning 10% of the fees they pay. So it’s a great opportunity to share some bad beat stories and make money while you’re doing it. You can follow which of your friends joined InsuredPlay and the amount of money you earned from them using the view cash earned link on the main page.
Good Luck!
Insurance at the poker table is similar to other types of insurance we buy to protect ourselves from the loss of our belongings. In the same way we would seek to safeguard our financial position if our car was stolen, we can also protect our financial interest in the pot when we have pocket Aces against pocket 7s.
The concept of insurance in poker has been around a while, but it increased in popularity when it first started appearing in televised poker games such as High Stakes Poker, Poker After Dark and it has even made its way into coverage of the World Series of Poker.
Fan favorite Phil Hellmuth is probably the most active of all the TV poker personalities when it comes to buying insurance. In fact, although all insurance comes at a slight cost, Hellmuth values insurance so much he often pays a significantly more than the odds dictate.
For example, in a 2007 televised WSOP bracelet event, Hellmuth got his remaining chips in with AA vs. 74 offsuit making him about an 85% favorite to win the hand. Hellmuth then proceeded to negotiate a deal to buy insurance from Phil Ivey. The two Phils agreed to a deal that Hellmuth would buy $20,000 worth of insurance at 4.5:1 odds.
So if Hellmuth would have lost the hand, Ivey would have paid him $90,000. This is a price Hellmuth would expect to pay if he were only a 81.82% favorite to win the hand. By agreeing to those odds, Hellmuth paid a pretty high premium.
With a structure similar to the one used at InsuredPlay, Hellmuth would have received a much better price. He would have received about 5.55:1 odds (84.75%). So, he could have obtained the same $90,000 of coverage for $16,775. That represents a 16% savings off of the cost Hellmuth originally paid.
Perhaps Hellmuth recognizes the impact that a bad beat will have on his mental approach to the rest of the game and he seeks out insurance in an attempt to reduce the effects of variance. He has had some famous incidents where he has lost control of his emotions after taking a bad beat. Whatever his reason, it is clear that he believes having insurance is beneficial to his game. It is so important to him that he is willing to overpay for the privilege.
Even if you don’t suffer from the same types of blow ups that we see from Hellmuth, losing a pot when a favorite can have a lasting impact in our subconscious. Sometimes the worst kind of tilt is the kind we don’t realize is happening.
Luckily, online poker players have the ability to reduce the emotional stress associated with bad beats and insure their hands for a great price by using InsuredPlay. Don’t let bad luck throw you off your game. Keep your cool knowing that even when the cards don’t fall in your favor, your bankroll and your mental game will be protected.
How often do players get it all-in before the river in fast fold games like Zoom Poker and Fast Forward Poker in comparison to normal ring games?
We will be mining our database for more of these fun facts. Tell us if you like it in the comments below and stay tuned for more!
As usual, we’ve been busy. The initial user interface was clunky, too narrow and hard to use. We’ve been working on improving the user interface and today we launched the new design. Here are the major improvements:
Fee levels & Hand counts:
Today we’re announcing a change in our fee structure. The change fixes a very obvious loophole in our pricing model:
Playing a ton of hands in micro stakes, going all-in every hand and gaining the lower fees before moving on to higher stakes.
We were always aware of the loophole but we didn’t change our model until today for two reasons:
Recently, the number of players taking advantage of the system has increased and we have been forced to make necessary changes. Without high volume, the 0.25% fee level is not sustainable for us. Think about it this way:
Some players are telling us to lower the prices for higher stakes. What they do is compare the higher stakes/lower rakes model of poker sites to our fee structure. This comparison fails to take into account a very basic fact: We’re not a poker site. We are in the online poker industry but our financial model is very different.
Taking more risk calls for higher profit margins but we do not want to do that. Insurance on higher stakes will not be more expensive than small stakes. However, for us to keep offering our service with these fees, every player must play fair.
We believe that we are offering our service at the best possible price. We always keep in mind that our players are trying to beat the game and make our adjustments accordingly.
With today’s update, WPT Poker will be fully supported.
This has been requested repeatedly over the last 2 months and so we extended our desktop app and our website to completely support WPT Poker.
Enjoy!
