As many of you have now heard, Merge has officially re-opened to the US players. We have taken full advantage of this news and are currently staking many players on Merge for MTTs and Cash games. Unfortunately, SNGs just do not run yet, as there is not enough traffic to keep those games flowing.

However, we have found the cash games to be incredibly soft, and the MTTs play very similiar to the 90 and 180s mans from FTP and Stars, making these a very easy transition for the former MTT and SNG regs.

We are staking solely on the Black Chip Poker Skin. We can get our players a nice 41.5% rakeback, a deposit bonus on our transfer, great customer service, and most importantly, we can assist our players with cash outs. So far, the Merge games have been a nice addition for our players.

Also, on Tuesday, members of congress listened to petitions for online poker to get regulated here in the US. You can check out the replay here: http://www.c-span.org/Events/Members-Hear-About-Status-of-Online-Gaming/10737425016/. Overall, the tone was very positive. For the first time, it seems it is not a question of whether poker should get regulated, but how to effectively regulate the industry. This is certainly a good sign, though as many of you who watched the live stream probably know, it was un-godly annyoing listening to people talk about a topic in which they have no experience. Regardless, my fingers are crossed that we will continue to see steps in the right direction in the near future.

It seems as though other big businesses and brands are banking on the coming regulation of online poker as well. Trump, along with several other casino and gaming companies, are already trying to establish their poker software footprint by setting up free poker rooms, which will make an easy transition over to real money when the time comes.

Stay Tuned....

First, I would like to welcome Faber84, JohnyStacks, and Caruso to the SPI Team.  They are awesome players who are already putting up great results.  We are excited to have them on board and and light up the tables.

Last week was highlighted with a deep Sunday night run by JohnyStacks.  The Skype Group was buzzing as we were all railing Johny in the 2300 man, $5 rebuy.  He was running over the field, taking a healthy 2.5 million chip stack to the final table.  Unfortunately, his tourney got cut short when his stack was crippled as his Kings got cracked by AQ in a preflop all in situation.  He finished in 7th place for a $1k score.  Awesome work Johny.  My wish for this week- a PokerStars gift of final table run good.  

UPDATES:  As a reward for our players, we are introducing a new volume-based incentive.  SNG players that reach 300 games a week, and MTTers who play 250 games a week, will receive an extra 5% of profits for that week!

I have a Skype group for SNG and MTT players.  We currently have over 60 players!  We just introduced a new branch of the group specifically for strategy talk.  For anyone who is interested in connecting with other players, talking strategy, posting hands, railing, or general conversation, send me a contact request on Skype at losched16.  Remember to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook.  

Let me first start off by saying, I love PLO. I started playing a year ago and absolutely love and enjoy the action in the game. It is always exciting and you seemingly always run into guys waiting for other games who jump in and try to play a few hands and do not have a clue. I had the opportunity to get up to the casino a couple of times in the last few weeks and played two $1/$2 PLO sessions. They were both profitable sessions but as many of you know, the swings can be extremely volatile.

The first session, I went through 3 buy-ins before finally building my fourth one into a profit for the night of $375. There were some tough beats in there but nobody really wants to hear about them! The second session was quite comical. The first notable hand I played was raised and I called with AdJd46. The flop came 5d7dQ. The guy to my right opened for the pot of $50 and I re-potted it to put the gentleman all-in with my two draws. The guy insta-calls and I ask if he wants to run it twice and he says, "Why? I won!" Interesting answer with two cards to come as he clearly was not very familiar with the game (very common in casinos). So we ran it once and I bricked on both of my draws and his set of queens held up. I was still laughing a few hours later along with several of the guys at the table to his answer about running it twice.

The hand of the night was very straight forward, yet quite interesting. There was a small raise pre-flop and I called with Js10s 45. The flop came 789 all off-suit and UTG bet the pot of $40. Lady to my right called the $40 and I re-potted it for $225. Next guy goes all-in, UTG moves all in and lady mucks after thinking about it for a couple of minutes (says she folded 88). We all have J10 but one of the guys has J10K9 and the other has J106Q, both with re-draws to a higher straight. Crazy enough. the turn and river are both spades and I scoop the pot with my flush! The board paired on the river too so the lady who says she folded 88 would have won it all. Thanks for folding! I ended up winning $400 for the night and look forward to getting back there on Friday night for another PLO session.
I hope PLO picks up in popularity because it is a great game and always full of action. Good luck on the tables and keep up the great work!

Matt

Hello Everyone -
I just wanted to say how excited I am to be such a big part of our new website and business. Although I do not communicate daily with many of you, I do follow your results every day and look forward to your emails every night with your updated statistics. Clint and I have a lot of great ideas for the site and we will continue to grow and learn from our players and make any necessary changes. I firmly believe in rewarding those who work hard and are successful, so stay tuned to some new ideas and programs we plan to launch in the coming months. We are really excited for the future of our company and look forward to all that is to come! Good luck on the tables....

Matt

I just wanted to give a shout out to our staked players this week. Real solid and exciting week from everyone. A few notables moments: First, Felipe moved up stakes from the $7 to the $15 18 man tables. As a result, he had a great Friday and Saturday, profiting close to $700 in just those 2 days. We are looking forward to see what kind of results he will be putting together this week. Good luck to Felipe.

Now, no offense to our SNG players, especially because I am a SNG player myself, but we are boring players. Day in and day out, we just load up tables and grind out profits. However, those MTT guys really bring the excitement, and that is exactly what we got from Gil3000 on Saturday and Sunday. Unfortunately, being from the US, I cannot even watch real money games through my PokerStars software. But, as many of you know, I have a Skype group with over 60 SNG and MTT players. The chat was buzzing around Gil this weekend as he was making several deep runs. Apparently, rebuys were Gil's friend this weekend, finishing 48 out of 2300, 62 out of 4800, then on Sunday, finishing 7th out of 3065 runners. Luckily I was getting frequent updates from our own group rail. Awesome work this weekend Gil. He is definitely going to have plenty of big scores coming up.

Good luck at the tables everyone.

-Clint

Hey everyone, welcome to Strategic Poker Investments.  We are excited that the site is off and running.  I would first like to thank Andy for doing a great job with this site.  We could not have done it without him.  Please check out his sites, www.sitnogocoaching.com and www.pokereverything.com.  Two great new resources for the poker community.

I would also like to thank my friend and staking partner, Matt.  Matt and I were roommates for all 4 years in college, which is where we first started to really get into poker.  I can remember when we both deposited our first $50 into Party Poker (followed up by many more $50 deposits).   Here we are, many years later, several jobs later, building a business around something we love.  Without Matt, SPI would not exist today.  Well, we officially kicked off SPI a few weeks ago with our first staking arrangement.  We now have 5 staked players with 3 more on the way.   We hope to grow our stable of players even further and give many more players a great opportunity to advance their game.  We have so many big plans for this site, but all with one goal in mind: To provide an amazing staking experience for the poker community.  Especially with all of the turmoil surrounding the poker industry, players still deserve a place to turn to in trying to advance their poker career.  We want to be that go-to place that both players and stakers can trust.  I will be using this blog as a way to keep everyone updated with all of new features and benefits that we will providing to you.  So as my first update, I just want to give everyone a little sneak peak into what they can expect from SPI in the coming weeks:

First, we are currently in talks with a poker training site to develop a partnership, so that our staked players will have the opportunity to get coached by some of the top players in the game. This will be very exciting for SPI and our players. We are in the process of developing a web-based platform for our players to report their results.  Currently we are utilizing a daily player performance log through Excel, but we will look to incorporate that daily log directly into the site.  For our stakers, we will begin advertising for players to make available for staking.  You can learn more about this process in the Stake A Player section.

Finally, as you will see in our Existing Players section, we will have full transparency for our players and stakers.  You will see exactly who SPI is staking and their results.  We pride ourselves in helping our players achieve their maximum potential.  In additon, our stakers can have confidence in SPI that we are approving players to be staked that are profitable and trustworthy.   Trust is a key component in the poker industry, especially when it comes to poker staking.   We want to do our best to gain your trust. 

Be sure to check back here daily for more updates, participate in the forum, read our player blogs, and check out how our players are doing.  If you have any questions, problems, or suggestions on how to make this site better, do not hesitate to email me at Clint@spistaking.com, or contact me directly on Skype (losched16).  Also, you can learn more about me in the About and Coaches section of the site, as well as on my personal coaching site, www.CrushtheDonks.com.  Thanks to everyone who helped with this site and for those in my Skype group chat who gave me some great advice along the way.

-Clint

Hi guys

Those of you that are playing as staked poker players with SPI will be issued a log in for the site. This means that you can use the poker staking forum and also the blog facility on here.

We'd love to hear about your progress whether you're in the middle of a heater or suffering from the poker Gods in a downswing.

Good luck at the tables :)

Andy