Scotland Poker Money List
07 Dec
It may have been the strangest year on record, but it hasn’t stopped the money flowing, and today we’re going to look at poker’s biggest winners of 2020 and see how they shape up against their casino game rivals.
When Brazil’s Pablo Brito Silva scooped $1million in Uruguay back in February, he would have had no idea it would bring him close to a top 20 spot for the year, but even that huge sum could only make number twenty-one in poker’s 2020 money-winners list.
Justin Bonomo has more than $49 million in live poker tournament cashes, the second-most ever behind Bryn Kenney ($56.4 million). His absolutely ridiculous run in 2018, which included a Super High. Dave Ulliott, who has died of cancer aged 61, was a Hull pawnbroker and former jailbird who, as “The Devilfish”, became Britain’s best-known professional poker player. Our games are intended for individuals aged 18 and above for amusement purposes only. These games do not offer real money gambling or an opportunity to win real money.
A month later, Phil Ivey’s High Roller Sochi visit would see him bag four cashes for almost $1.7million, good enough to take 9th spot for the year.
It was Canada’s Tim Adams, though, whose back-to-back Super High Roller Bowl victories in Australia, then Russia, launched him to a monster $5,854,376 year. That’s almost $2million more than Bulgaria’s Stoyan Madanzhiev took for winning the first-ever World Series online Main Event this year, a very sweet $3,910,705 payout.
This year’s online poker boom also threw up some of the biggest pots ever seen in the online game, with Ali Imsirovic taking the biggest-ever No Limit Hold’em pot - a monster $974,631 against Tan Xuan.
That outgunned the $842,438 NLHE record that Viktor Malinowski had set just the week before, and both hands smashed the 12-year old record of Di Dang, who took a pot of $723,941 from Tom Dwan.
Impressive as all these huge numbers are, how does it compare to the biggest wins in other casino games? Notwithstanding skill, luck, variance and whatever else separates our favourite games, some of them occasionally make poker look like a pauper’s game.
The year was not even a month old when a slots player landed a $20million jackpot, the big-paying MegaMoolah game, soon followed by a $12million win as slots fans tried to cash in.
With a Mega Fortune Dream win of more than $3.5million the same day, it was a lucrative time to be online.
Although it’s easier to convert and count everything in $, landing huge jackpots is far from being only a US phenomenon, as big winners at new online casinos UK have proven many times.
This summer saw the aptly-named Major Millions pay out £1,650,382 to one lucky UK player, just a few weeks after a Swedish player pocketed €2.6 million.
It’s not just an ‘around the globe’ tag that marks out the biggest winners this year, as the wins cross the age and sex barriers too, from young housewives to retired gents – pros and amateurs alike enjoying the fun of the game and the chance of a life-changing win so appealing.
Sometimes it is poker players who win big at other games, as English poker pro Jake Cody showed a couple of years ago when he placed his $42,000 tournament winnings on a single roll of the roulette wheel.
With a crowd chanting ‘Black, black, black!’ the ball stopped on black 22 and Cody had doubled his money in just a few minutes.
The poker connection continued this year when a player known only as ‘MR2SALTY4YA’ decided to treat himself to a birthday present on a popular poker site’s live blackjack tables.
It turned out to be the perfect treat and a clever decision when his $1 sidebet landed the $95,000 Diamond Jackpot in November – a third seven of diamonds winning the lot.
That might sound small compared to some of our big wins, but the $1.6million won a couple of months previously on the same Blackjack tables is certainly up there with the best poker wins.
DR. HODL picked up that monster win, starting out with $1000 and building it up across the month of August.
Naturally, big wins deserve big celebrations, and the dealer in the first blackjack win above was first to be rewarded, with a $500 tip and bottle of wine.
Overall, it’s been a bumper year for players, easily transitioning from the live casinos to their online equivalents – with no shortage of the massive payouts that we all dream about. What 2021 holds is still unknown: it may not be quite as strange, but you can be sure that for many it will again be a jackpot year!
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Online Poker Sites Guide
We all love poker - but which online poker sites do we love? Online poker is absorbing, entertaining - sometimes maddening - but which is the best poker site to play on? You don’t want to have to join up on twenty sites just to sort out the good, the bad and the ugly.
The great news is that you don’t have to.
We love poker too, and we’ve done the hard work for you. Read our guide below, and find the answer to the $64,000 dollar question - how do I find the best online poker?
Online poker is absorbing, entertaining - sometimes maddening - but which is the best poker site to play on? You don’t want to have to join up on twenty sites just to sort out the good, the bad and the ugly.
The great news is that you don’t have to. We love poker too, and we’ve done the hard work for you. Read our guide below, and find the answer to the $64,000 dollar question - how do I find the best online poker?
Different poker games
The vast majority of online sites offer Texas Hold’em. It is, without doubt, the most played internet poker game across the world. You’ll find lots of flavours of Hold’em, such as Omaha Hold’em and Omaha Hi Lo.
Whereas Hold’em has five community cards and two personal cards in the hole, some other variants have different card distribution.
Perhaps the best-known alternative is 7 card stud, one of the classic poker games. Players get three hold cards, and four communal cards.
Pick your platform for the best playing experience
When you’re playing online, the software platform makes a great difference to the game experience. The major gaming players are also big names in the online poker world, for example, Playtech, IGSoft, Micrograming and others. Some of the bigger poker sites have their own proprietary technology.
It’s important to distinguish between games that are run by online video technology and those that employ real dealers and live streaming.
With a video game, you join a game, with avatars representing you and the other players, then play the game. The major difference in playing with live dealer play, streamed to your device, is that it aims to replicate the experience of playing poker in a casino, often using webcams to stream live pictures of players.
This technology is transforming online tournament play too, with NetEnt leading the way in live dealer casino games.
In both cases, the graphics matter, and the game needs top quality resolution, particularly if you want to play multiple hands and therefore need to display the games at a smaller size.
You also need some player aids, such as a history table, showing the hands you’ve played. And if you’re a sociable type, you’ll want to replicate the banter of the real-life poker night, so a zippy chat function is a must.
Traditionally, many of the sites required you to download software, but they now realise that mobile play is a huge, and fast-growing, market.
That means that a significant percentage of these sites are now able to offer instant, browser-based play with no need to download an app.
Scotland Poker Money List 2020
Pick your pot and game type
Poker sites will offer a range of tables, with different types and levels of pot. Some sites have tables offering very low “blinds” - the bets that have to be posted by one or two players each game.
These low wager tables may have fairly wild and unpredictable play, as people are less inhibited when they are going to lose less, and newer players often start on these tables.
At the other extreme, you’ll find “No LImit Hold’em”. In these games, players can bet, or raise another player’s bet, to any level. That includes all the chips they have, which is known as “all in”.
Scotland Poker Money List Today
The highest staking players have found a new home on the internet, because local land-based casinos (except for Vegas) don’t offer tables with very high stakes.
Between these extremes, the larger poker sites will offer a range of table limits and blind sizes, so you can pick the level of game that you’re comfortable with.
Scotland Poker Money List Winners
There are also two types of games - “Sit n Go” and cash games. If you’ve deposited cash and are therefore playing with your own “real” money, you can join or leave a cash game whenever you want, whether you’ve lost or won.
Sit n Gos are different. There’s a fixed buy-in and everyone starts with the same sized stack. They usually last from 20 minutes to an hour, although there are very fast “turbo” versions.
One of the things you may want to look at is volume. That’s the number of games available at any one time. If you work irregular hours, for example, you may be better off with very large sites where there are games are running virtually 24/7.
Sign-up promos and bonuses
No deposit bonuses are common although not that high - £20 would be typical. Bonuses can take the form of a cash deposit match, along with tickets or free passes for entering pay-to-play tournaments. There’s very often a playing requirement before you can withdraw bonuses; you’ll need to play a certain number of hands.
Getting better and better
Some of the big sites offer great resources for improving your game - for example learning about aspects of play such as bankroll management. Some even offer facilities for tracking your progress towards becoming a better player.
In the end, it’s a matter of personal preference - the type of game you want to play, how much you want to stake, whether you like large, high volume poker sites, or smaller, quirkier ones.
As you continue playing your favourite poker sites may change. But one thing’s for sure - a love of poker tends to last forever!