A great program!

Poker hold’em beginners, Lyon is your territory this weekend! The third Partouche Poker Tour Super Satellite of the season is going to take place in the Lyon Vert Casino in Tour de Salvagny. Lyon and Partouche are celebrating this event as they should, by holding two extra tournaments with 200 players in each. So there are now three good reasons to spend your weekend in Lyon.

The weekend is almost here and so it time for you to plan your weekend. On Friday 14^th March at 9pm there will be an exceptional tournament with 200 players at the Pharaon in Lyon. This will be an ideal opportunity to practice your poker skills before the Texas hold’em event of the month begins: the Lyon Vert Super Satellite! It all starts at 4pm on Saturday; registration is expected to finish at 3pm. At the time this article went to press, there were already 320 players registered and many more are expected. So to the joy of poker lovers a record crowd for Lyon is expected. Like at the previous stops, everything will be organised down to the smallest details for the comfort of the players and for those who only think about poker. There will be breaks every 2 hours with a dinner break of an hour and a half. For players eliminated early, there will be a second side event for 200 players at 9pm in the same casino (Lyon Vert). Note that to participate in the two tournaments of 200 players, you need to get to the venue in advance of half an hour before the beginning of the competition. A word of advice: be on time, places are limited!

• 1 tournament at Pharaon on Friday 14^th March at 9pm
• 1 Super Satellite at the Lyon Vert Casino on Saturday 15^th March at 4pm
• 1 tournament at the Lyon Vert Casino on Saturday 15^th March at 9pm
  

Participation fee for the tournaments is: 250 euros + 35 euros. 200 players expected.
Fee for the Super Satellite is: 1,075 euros

This weekend, Lyon is the king of poker!

The art of bluffing

What does a player who never bluffs and a player who bluffs all the time have in common? They will both have a hard time winning a tournament. Bluffing involves timing, calculating and control. It is a weapon which can be as fatal for the person being bluffed as for the bluffer.

“Liars only win one thing, that they are never believed, even when they tell the truth”. Bluffing is one of the most difficult techniques to master, but is often the first term mentioned by a beginner when they start playing poker. It is not however until one has played many games that one starts to enjoy this art and use it well. Bluffing is a technique that steers one’s opponent into making a mistake and folding even though they have the best hand. There are two types of buffs. A total bluff; where one deceives one’s opponent with a very weak hand, giving them no chance to win the move. And a semi-bluff; which consists of playing with a low value hand, but that has the potential to improve.

How to bluff

There are many factors that effect bluffing, like timing for example. Bluffing is a weapon that must not be used in haste or without thinking about it. The more you use it, the more it looses its value. It must therefore be used sparingly and only to win pots whose value are worth it. Measuring the risk is vital at a poker table. A player must also not bluff time and time again in front of the same players: “one can beat a thousand people one time, but not beat one person a thousand times…” The amount one raises by is also an important consideration. If a player finds himself making a total bluff and he does not make a big enough raise, there will be a chance he will be called by another player and consequently loose the pot.

Don’t forget that one’s position at the table is also very important. If one is the last to speak in the pre-flop phase, and few of the other players have folded, one will be an ideal position to win the pot. This is quite a successful technique, but one needs to make a significant raise to put off the other players. It is inadvisable to bluff if more that two players are after you. Don’t try your luck either against players who will go all in no matter what. Of course, it is all relative and each situation is different. That is the beauty and complexity of the game.

Acting

Maintaining one’s composure when bluffing is also hard to master. When a player finds himself making a total bluff, his emotions can betray him. Being a good actor is therefore strongly recommended. The main difficulty is to not look like you are bluffing. Your opponents will always keep one eye on you, as they look out for the slightest hint that you are bluffing from the way you act. It is important to always act like a player who has good cards. Be equally careful of being pushed into bluffing. Some of your opponents will do anything to make you bluff. And like Maurice Chapelan said “pretending to believe a lie is an exquisite lie”. In poker, it is a delight…

Guess what’s back?

Five weeks after the Divonne les Bains Super Satellite, the Partouche Poker Tour heads to Lyon for the third Super Satellite of the season.

The Partouche Poker Tour is back on its tour of France and heading to Lyon and the prestigious Lyon Vert Casino at Tour de Salvagny. The whole PPT team are as expected already there and are ready to prepare for the third Super Satellite of the season. After the resounding success of the first two stages at Saint-Amand and Divonne, we are expecting an exciting and long evening of poker in one of the most beautiful casinos in France. The stake is the same as usual - a prize pool of 50,000 euros given to the best players of the night as well as a ticket for the Main Event in Cannes worth 8,500 euros. A Main Event which, let me remind you, has a prize of 2,000,000 euros! So come along everyone, you have until Saturday to register to participate in the biggest Texas hold’em tournament ever organised in Europe! “A unique experience, a life experience” agree the 681 players present at the two first stages.

* To register for the Lyon Vert Super Satellite you need to:
- register directly at a Partouche casino or at the Partouche Groupe’s head office: 141 bis rue de Saussure-Paris 75017, 9am-6pm.
- register by telephone (ask for Mme Grenand) on + 33 (0) 4 78 87 11 56, 9am-6pm until Friday 14th March 2008.
- go directly to the venue at the Lyon Vert Casino in Tour Salvagny

* Registration for the Lyon Vert Super Satellite via the internet and satellites is now closed. To participate in the next Super Satellites, you need to:
- win one of the Satellite tournaments held in the 41 poker rooms of Partouche’s casinos (see the list of tournaments at www.partouchepokertour.fr).
- register directly at www.partouchepokertour.fr, on the page “Online registration”.

Satellite participation fee: 125€
Super Satellite participation fee: 1,075€
Main Event in Cannes participation fee: 8,500€

Weekend of fun in Lyon!

Poker and tournament amateurs, Lyon is for you! Just before the third Partouche Poker Tour Super Satellite at the Lyon Vert casino on the 15th March, Partouche is organising two Texas hold'em tournaments with 200 players in each. The Partouche Poker Tour and two big Texas hold'em tournaments equals three major events which will be more popular than football! When Partouche bets, everyone folds!

• 1 tournament at Pharaon Friday 21.00
• 1 tournament at Lyon Vert casino Saturday 21.00
• Fee: 250+35, 200 players expected.

To register, go to the relevant casino up to half an hour before the tournament begins. But hurry up, there will not be enough places for everyone!

Hey there!

Here are the dates you have been waiting for! The first three Partouche Poker Tour Super Satellites are to be broadcast on Eurosport. So Texas hold'em lovers, grab your remote controls! You will able to at last see the biggest ever tournament organised in Europe, listen to commentaries by the beautiful Elsa Fayer, analyse the performances of the best players such as Remy Biechel or Azzedine Yessad and of course enjoy all the magic of Texas hold'em... That just about sums it up!

Super Satellite in Saint-Amand-les-Eaux:
04/04/2008 : 21.00-24.00
11/04/2008 : 21.00-24.00

Super Satellite in Divonne-les-Bains :
18/04/2008 : 21.00-24.00
09/05/2008 : 21.00-24.00

Super Satellite in Lyon :
16/05/2008 : 21.00-24.00
30/05/2008 : 21.00-24.00

How to relax at the Poker table

It is difficult to remain calm in all situations around the poker table. However, all players strive to find an effective solution. Massages, walkmans or personal good luck charms are all good ways to make one feel more comfortable, but in the end, everyone gets nervous.

Woody Allen once said: "as long as man is mortal, he will never relax". This quote makes sense at the poker table: "as long as a player can loose, he will never relax". Whether professionals or amateurs, players have all at one time or another cracked under the pressure. This is what happens in tournaments, games or even just one's turn; poker creates intense emotions that man cannot always control. And even if some players brag about having the "poker face", that does not stop them boiling over inside. That is why at the Partouche Poker Tour Super Satellites, many players came with their good luck charm and others with advice from the biggest poker stars that they found on the internet, in magazines or DVDs. It was not rare to come across clones of stars such as Phil Laak. All of these methods are good to try to relax and ignore all the things that could disturb one's concentration. But the stake was so big…that it was all in vain.

"When one is nervous, it never ends well" Remy Biechel

This is a true statement and some players do appear to be relaxed. For example, François Tardieu is chilled out and is used to big international backgammon tournaments, the Divonne-les-Bains finalist Eddy Glaude is always smiling, and the winner of the Saint-Amand Super Satellite Remy Biechel also seems relaxed. For the latter, the pleasure of playing is his only way of escaping the pressure. That and his walkman: “I am relaxed simply because I enjoy playing. It is not obvious, but when one participates in a tournament feeling nervous, it never ends well. So one does what it takes to relax. For that, I have my walkman which isolates me when I am not feeling so great or when I want to block out the taunts of certain players who are always either unhappy or too happy. I turn up the volume and become calm immediately. This is what I did last year at Cannes [where he came 4th]. I took my walkman and was sleepy for 20 minutes at a table. The funniest thing was that I still observed what was going on around me. Sometimes if nothing much is happening, I leave the table to have a rest. It is that simple.”

“Snapping is bad for one’s health”

If Remy takes such precautions, it is because he know that staying calm in a tournament is the key to one’s success, even if 12 hours of intense competition can seem long. But the more one rushes, the less one is on top of things: “I have already seen people crack when they have one or two bad losses. You see them end up eliminating themselves by calling when they should really fold. They literally snap!” This is a perfect demonstration of what one must not do. To avoid this, at Divonne, certain players close to snapping asked the PPT masseuses to relieve their stress. That is why we say that poker is a one of the most violent sports in the world…and why a Zen attitude is recommended to help one win. One rarely hears of the best players weeping over losses, excluding some exceptions like Tony G from Lithuania. But as the well know proverb goes: “When a tree falls, one hears it, when a forest grows, not a sound”. Champions understand this…

The Maestro's opinion

At the first Super Satellite at Saint-Amand, the backgammon champion François Tardieu tells us about his view of poker and its similarities with backgammon - mainly bluffing!

Backgammon has no more secrets for François Tardieu. This is because the French champion and triple European champion who is considered one of the best backgammon players in the world, participated in the first Super Satellite of the Partouche Poker Tour. Although he has played poker for twenty years, François Tardieu has never jumped into the deep end. The PPT was the ideal launch pad: "2,000,000 euros could not be missed!" he exclaimed a little after his elimination. But although the stake is still important to the "maestro", so is enjoying the game: "One can relax at the poker table, something that is not always possible in real life. In poker you can lie, hide things and pretend. Everything that is forbidden or frowned upon in real life, is considered "good play" in poker. This is what makes it interesting". And when we asked him what the similarities between backgammon and poker are, the "maestro" replied: "there are numerous similarities between the two disciplines. For example, the ability to concentrate for a long time, to observe or to have a good memory. One equally learns lots about the psychological dimension of others and of oneself. In backgammon, like in poker, one can manipulate one’s opponents if they are not already controlling you. Over time, one improves, one acquires wisdom and experience and one learns a lot from one's mistakes. In fact, the only difference is that with poker, one is not obliged to have good cards to win". François Tardieu will be at the Casino le Lyon Vert on the 15^th March where he will try his luck at the third Super Satellite of the season.