Fedor Holz

Fedor_Holz-683x1024Still only in his late twenties, Saarbrücken-born Fedor Holz has already enjoyed an extraordinary poker career. So far, he has won just one World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet, in the High Roller for One Drop event in 2016, but collected $5 million for his trouble and enjoyed his biggest payout yet, $6 million, when finishing runner-up to Justin Bonomo in the WSOP Big One for One Drop event in 2018. In his short, but highly lucrative, career, Holz, who specialises in high roller tournaments, has pocketed seven-figure earnings on five other occasions. Currently ranked sixth on the all-time money list, with $32.6 million in live earnings alone, he is, unquestionably, one of the most talented and, arguably, luckiest tournament poker players of his generation.

Holz started playing poker, informally, as a 17-year-old student, before turning to online poker once of legal age. Subsequently, under the auspices of a prominent multi-table tournament (MTT) player, he received the instruction, and stake, required to progress his career as a professional poker player, both online and live. Holz won his first cash prize, €15,320 , or $19,288, for finishing runner-up in the GPT II Deepstack Series Main Event at the King’s Resort Live in Rozvadov in the Czech Republic in 2012. He became a full-time professional poker in 2013, settled in Vienna, Austria – where he still resides – in 2014 and, later the same year, under the moniker ‘CrownUpGuy’, saw off 2,141 other players to claim the $1.3 million first prize at the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) Main Event.

Poker vs Blackjack: Which of these casino games is the one for you!

poker-682332_640-300x239Poker and Blackjack can perhaps be considered the kings of casino, iconic in their own way with casino and non casino players alike. Blackjack can certainly be seen to be a less involved game, less complex than poker and well suited to ‘newbies’, but when it comes to the potential for making money if you dedicate yourself to it, there’s nothing quite like poker. Just looking to the titans of the profession alone will tell you that. But again, it takes more time, dedication, and hard work to learn to become a confident and skilled Poker player.

Poker vs. Blackjack – Key Differences

Both are unique games that lure in large crowd of players and come to mind when you think of a casino settings. However, Blackjack is easier to get into than Poker, more in technology language ‘plug and play’. Outside of behaviour such as card counting Blackjack mostly requires luck to win and suffer less at the hands of the house egde. Poker has a lot more elements to it, requiring skill, psychology, and to a degree deception to win in the longrun. As such poker is highly competitive when compared to Blackjack. There are several strategies and elements used to win in Poker, while that’s not really true of Blackjack, which I personally see as a more fun based casino game.

In Blackjack, players can choose the extent of interaction with other players, as it’s mostly the dealer and their cards thats the point of focus. However, Poker can’t be played well if you lack social skills as you’re at a disadvantage if can’t read people to some extent. Put simply, in Blackjack, the player plays against the casino, and in poker, the player plays against other players. Thus it also creates a potentially more pressurised situation in poker… but with that comes opportunity if you can keep a cool head.

With blackjack it’s essentially all about minimising the house edge via deducing when to stick or twist and so on, and with poker the higher the stakes skill comes far more into play. Poker is both about understanding the odds and also player psychology all rolled into one. There’s are no fixed odds of winning as such, and you cannot know which hands others will play or fold.

Which One Is Easier to Learn – Poker or Blackjack?

If you are a person who wants to enter the world of the casino while having an easy learning process, Blackjack is your game! The playing strategy is pretty specific, and there is not much to master unlike Poker, which is harder to learn and even harder to master, but with potentially large rewardings if you’re a cut above the rest!

Phil Hellmouth

phil-hellmuth-300x269Phillip ‘Phil’ Hellmouth Jr., still known to many as ‘The Poker Brat’, despite turning 55 in 2019, was born in Madison, Wisconsin. He went to college locally, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, before dropping out to focus on his poker activities. In the World Series of Poker (WSOP), Hellmouth earned his first cash as long ago as 1988, when he finished fifth in a Seven-Card Stud Split event at Binion’s, Las Vegas. However, the following year, at the age of 24, he won the WSOP $10,000 No Limit Hold’em World Championship at the same venue, making him, at the time, the youngest player to do so.

That record was beaten by Peter ‘Icegate’ Eastgate, aged 22, in 2008 and again, by Joe ‘The Kid’ Cada, aged 21, the following year, but Hellmouth still holds several WSOP records, including the most WSOP bracelets (15) and the most cashes (137). His victory in the WSOP Europe Main Event in 2012 also made him the only player ever to win the WSOP Main Event and the WSOPE Main Event. Hellmuth was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2007 and currently lies nineteenth in the all-time money list, with just shy of $23 million in live earnings.

For all his success in Texas hold’em and other poker variants, Hellmuth is still prone to foul-mouthed temper tantrums, particularly after a bad beat, and fully deserves his derogatory nickname. He was widely criticised for launching a verbal assault on James Campbell at the 2018 WSOP Main Event, simply because Campbell re-raised, all-in, after – at the time, unbeknown to Hellmuth – flopping a flush draw. As it turned out, Hellmuth folded, but Campbell failed to make his flush and lost the hand to the third player in the hand, Alex Kuzmin.

Lawrence Revere

lawrence-revere-225x300Introduction

Lawrence Revere was a pit boss for 28 years as well as an author and professional Blackjack player. Born Griffith K Owens on November 5 1915, he played under several aliases, including Leonard “Speck” Parsons and Paul Mann.

Revere graduated from the University of Nebraska with a Degree in Mathematics a was known for his card counting strategies developed with Julian Braun detailed in “Playing Blackjack as a Business” The strategies included The Revere Point Counting, The Ten Count Strategy, The Revere Five Count Strategy and The Reverse Plus-Minus Strategy. He was a controversial figure as he worked both sides of the game, a casino pit boss, and a player where he advised both and his strategies still get used today.

Making The Most of his Experience

Revere is amongst the most famous names in Blackjack, and he grew up on the streets during the Great Depression hawking newspapers for two cents apiece. By the age of 13, he got involved in a life of gambling, working as a Blackjack dealer in the backroom of a barbershop. After graduating with a Masters in Math’s during World War II, he moved to Las Vegas. Revere had no trouble finding employment at a casino as a Blackjack dealer climbing the ladder to pit boss, even operating his own casino for a while.

His employers didn’t know that he was secretly batting for the other team as a professional Blackjack player and soon became a master of disguise to sustain his anonymity throughout his extensive 27-year gambling career. Lawrence Reveres 1969 publication Playing Blackjack as a Business was the first strategy guide on Blackjack written by a professional Blackjack player with insider knowledge from both sides of the fence.

Where is he now?

Sadly Lawrence Revere passed away on April 23 1977, from lung cancer and in 2005, Revere’s accomplishments got recognized with his worthy induction into the Hall of Fame.