The title might seem sensational but I assure you this is the greatest poker variant I have ever played. This is a game guaranteed to spice up that otherwise dull home game.

In fact, this game is so awesome, so terrifically badass, so freakin amazing! I felt I had to write a blog and share it with all of you.

The game is called Sviten Special and it was invented by some Swedish guy named Anders Bengtsson.

Obviously this Bengtsson guy is a player with a sick need for constant degenerate action on every hand. Although I've never met the guy, I'm sure him and I would get along well.

I learned the game from a friend of his, Franke Boy. All I have to say is thank you.

Overview

Sviten Special is a split pot game, but not in the way you're thinking. The game is basically a mix of Pot-Limit Omaha, and Five-Card Draw. Half the pot goes to best draw hand, half the pot to the best Omaha hand.

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• 2

There's not much to say about this session, and definitely nothing good. I should have known right when I woke up and told myself, "Just sleep in and take the day off."

Normally I really look forward to Sunday tournaments, even when I've been running bad at them or in general. However, this Sunday had complications before I even woke up. 

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• 1

It took five episodes of High Stakes Poker Season 6 to bring us an episode with some real action.

Episode five, which aired yesterday, had just that - and loads of it.

We had Dario spazzing vs durrrr, Gus getting felted for 200k vs. Negreanu, Mercier vs. Ivey and, of course, durrrr three-barelling Ivey.

Any one of those hands would make a great strategy snapshot. But, sadly, we had to narrow it down to the single greatest.

IMO, it's a close race between Ivey "picking off" Mercier's bluff and durrrr's three-barrel.

Though the Ivey-durrrr hand might have been more exciting, I believe there's more to talk about in the Mercier-Ivey hand.

The durrrr hand was just a sick three-barrel in a three-bet pot. Of course, had Ivey called like he was contemplating with his pair of sixes, we would really have something to talk about.

However, I wouldn't be able to provide much insight on fifteenth-level soul-reading so it's a good thing he folded.

The Mercier hand, though, is very interesting and not just because he's a PokerListings blogger.

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• 10

A couple of days ago we got really excited about a WPT final table. Something we thought might never happen again after being forced to sit through this year's LAPC finale.

The reason was Phil Hellmuth. He made the final six of Bay 101 and, as you've probably heard, had a bit of a breakdown when he took a bad beat and busted in sixth.

We had only heard accounts of the scene, and seen a few pics, but today we've dug up video evidence.

Some sneaky fan recorded this on his mobile device so it's not exactly HD, but it does get the point across.

Hellmuth gets it in with queens against an ace and gets rivered. He stands up, shakes hands and then gets down on his hands and knees in the corner for five minutes.

In the past Hellmuth's antics have been unsportsmanlike, obnoxious and just plain rude but never before has he got down on his hands and knees and wept. This final table is a great accomplishment and the fact he went out to a bad beat shouldn't ruin that for him.

Don't be sad. Be glad!

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• 2

In my last post, I talked about how I was on to round 2 of the NBC Heads-Up Championship after I defeated Daniel Negreanu.

I faced Pieter De Korver in my next match and ended up beating him as well. I had the chiplead for almost the whole match and was winning probably 70-75% of hands, but when the blinds went from 600/1200 to 1k/2 we got it in for his 11 bb stack, him holding A10 vs my A9... 9 on the river, no big deal!

If I had lost this pot, we would have been back to even in chips with 20 bbs each.

In my next match, I faced Phil Laak. This match started out completely opposite to the match with Pieter. Laak crushed me in the beginning stages of the match beating me on almost every hand.

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• 1

Hello, hello. Just wanted to give you guys an update on the weekend's activities.

I believe we last left off with me running super bad at the LAPC and losing the high-roller to a one-outer on the river, the main event kings to aces in the first level like a fish, losing to a free roll in PLO for $50k nuts vs nuts and losing a $45k pot with a wrap and a flush draw to middle set which we ran twice.

So basically, I needed to get out of LA.

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• 13

Poker pro Matt Stout is back with another installment of The Sunday Report. Stout will track all his results for his full online MTT Sunday schedule, complete with profits and losses.

Keep track right here on the PokerListings Blog.

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• 3

Though there were basically no big hands of note on Episode 4 of GSN's High Stakes Poker last night, there was at least one interesting twist.

After some haggling, Tom Dwan bet Phil Ivey $1 million that he couldn't go vegetarian for an entire year.

Now chances are this bet doesn't go an entire year, either one side or the other will buy out before the year is up. But it got me to thinking what would your price be?

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• 6

After my 3^rd place finish at the High Roller event in LA, I knew I needed to make my way back to Las Vegas. I had an invitation to play in the NBC Heads Up Championship, how could I say no to that? 

I came back that same night after the finish of the High Roller event. I rode back with a couple buddies crammed in their tiny 2 door car... I rode in the back seat! 

We left around 2 am and arrived in Vegas around six. It was a miserable drive, but I was happy to finally get here. 

I chilled out the first day I was here, just hanging with friends, drinking some beers and having a good time. The next day was the drawing party for the event. It was pretty cool, I was able to bring two of my good buddies, Andy and the one and only- Daniel O'Brien, and two of his friends as well. 

We all had a great time there and I found out who I was matched up against, Daniel Negreanu.

He's not exactly my first choice from the field, as there are plenty of much weaker opponents. However, I was not totally opposed to the thought of playing him as I knew there would be a good chance our match would be the featured one. 

I have also played a lot against Daniel and feel like I have a good read on how he plays. 

Our match did end up being on the featured table, and also the fastest one. I knocked him out of what I would guess to be around the 10^th hand of the match. 

I got all the money in on a board of J-3-3-2 holding QQ vs his 55 in a 3-bet pot. The structure of these matches are fairly fast paced, as they are made for TV.  

Saturday, I will be playing Pieter De Korver in my first match. If I win this match, I will be in the money and down to the final 16. Hopefully I can win both matches tomorrow and be on the final day on Sunday when only 8 players are left. 

First place in this tournament is a cool half million.  Not bad eh?

Stay tuned to pokerlistings.com to follow the action

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• 4

About a week ago now the Olympics wrapped up with a Canadian gold in hockey. It was a storybook ending to a pretty amazing Olympics.

Kind of sad to see the Olympics go actually as Vancouver was an amazing place for those 17 days.

You could go downtown at any time of day, any day of the week and it was a party, and the typical Vancouver douchebags were nowhere to be found.

It was just people from Vancouver and around the world partying and having a good time.

I didn't get to take in many events first hand but I did watch almost everything on TV.

The two events I did see were Men's Ski Cross, which we bubbled the podium in, and the USA vs. Finland semi-final game in hockey.

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• 1

My 7th place finish in the $3k six-max event at the LA Poker Classic left me with two more events to play for the series: the final preliminary event ($5,100 NL) and the LAPC World Poker Tour $10k event.

The $5,100 event was relatively small with 130 entrants, but still paid $201,730 for first ... which doesn't suck.

I got off to a good start, flopping top two pair and getting paid on the very first hand when I sat down. Then after Kevin "belowabove" Saul had lost a couple big pots in the first level, he four-bet jammed with nines when I had aces.

Now the best part is that Kevin and I have bad blood that goes back a while, and there's good reason for him to be one of my least favorite people in poker.

I'm not a big fan of the slowroll, but this situation warranted...nay, required it in my opinion. I decided on the brief, thirty second slowroll so as to not waste too much of the other players' time.

Part of me wanted to wait until the clock had been called, though...

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• 4

About five months ago we did a blog showing how to use your Rock Band guitar to play online poker. After it launched I got a lot of feedback and requests for a similar article using the drum kit. So, naturally, I did just that.

The Rock Band (or Guitar Hero) instruments are basically just large controllers with unusual buttons. Instead of pressing the X button, you hit the big green drum. Since these controllers are conveniently compatible with your Windows PC, it's easy to use them for just about anything you want.

Play Poker with Your Rock Band Drum Kit

It's not hard to do and should take you less than 30 minutes from start to finish. If you just want to see how well it works and already know (or don't care) how to set it up, save yourself a couple of minutes and watch the video at the bottom of the blog.

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• 10

This week in LA has been rough in terms of poker, as it has in the past for me. First I want to make a correction to my last post. I had said that blinds were 4k/8k but they were actually 8k/16k in the Venetian 5k.

Now, I just want to say something to all of you haters out there.

First of all, when you are a figure in the media it is natural that not everyone is going to agree with things you say or opinions you may have, but when I post on this blog I want to express my feelings to you, talk about poker, and also let you know what kind of day to day activity I have been up to.

Yes, last week I bought some LV luggage, some glasses, some clothes, and got driven in a rolls, and I plan on doing more of that for the next 3 weeks, and yes, I guess it's natural for me to enjoy that.

If you want to hear strictly about poker when I am blogging and no humor that's fine with me, but I know for a fact that all of you who complained about not wanting to read the bullshit I wrote are going to hop back on that blog and wait for a new post because you don't have much better to do.

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• 18

Jason Mercier checks in before playing the final table of the $25k High Roller Event at the LAPC.

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• 1

We're not the types to publish stuff about other people's private matters. We're above that sort of thing.

So it looks like Erick Lindgren and Erica Schoenberg are dating. The evidence is pretty strong. They were spotted together having an intimate dinner in Las Vegas last week and Lindgren was railing Erica as she played deep in the LAPC main event.

When Schoenberg busted out his was the shoulder she (figuratively) cried on. And they were kissing in front of the media table so it's a pretty good bet.

As we know Erica used to date Frenchman David Benyamine. Without going too far we will say Erick and Erica look like a better match.

So that's pretty much it. Like we said, we don't publish stuff about people's personal business.

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• 9

Editor's note: Matt "ADZ124" Marafioti is the newest PokerListings.com blogger and he'll be updating us on his life as a young poker millionaire right here on the PokerListings Blog.

A few more quick thoughts: The napt venetian $5k, wee I had a piece of Tom Marchese aka 1st place finisher, boo i suck for finishing 70^th.

Yay for 5th live tourney cash in a row, 22 blinds left, 8 handed table, utg + 1 makes it 18,400 at 8/16k one caller and I'm in small blind with 99. I make it 42,400 and he goes all in for another 135,000.

I had about 125 left or so and tank-called off my stack and saw the bad news that he had KK. Thoughts on this play? I feel I overplayed the nines considering the number of people left in the tournament and maybe even underestimated the under the gun raiser.

I'd like to say lesson learned but I'm sure I'll make the same mistake again in the future, as in poker we often repeat our mistakes many times before correcitng them if ever.

I dunno how most poker players live, but I'm one of the few fortunate enough to get driven around vegas in a rolls, smoking on fine green herbs and stay in the tower suite this entire month.

Go into king baby in the Wynn and drop $10k on clothes and giggle about it, some Louis Vuitton luggage anyone? and a 3200$ pair of sunglasses? WHAT? ive spent $500-$800 on like 15 pairs, but this is my first $3,200 pair, they are 18 karrot gold and prety nice tho...chrome hearts...

Anyways, gonna go party and get drunk cuz its my bday, see if i can get laid maybe get a room at the roosevelt hotel tonight and just skip the highrollers tommorow... we will see...

I wish that they had a pokerstars bank at every casino, I hate losing $15k in a cash game and not being able to reload, online I can lose whatever i want in peace ... annnd done venting 

- Matt Marafioti

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• 22

Poker pro Matt Stout is back with another installment of The Sunday Report. Stout will track all his results for his full online MTT Sunday schedule, complete with profits and losses.

Keep track right here on the PokerListings Blog.

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• 5

It only took three episodes for Daniel Negreanu to try and spew off a stack on Season 6 of High Stakes Poker.

This time, however, the second river bailed him out for a chop and half the pot.

Other than that episode 3 was decent enough, PokerListings.com blogger Jason Mercier made his first appearance but didn't play any real hands of note.

Hopefully we'll be seeing more from him in future episodes.

But back to the Negreanu hand.

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• 0

Editor's Note: Matt "ADZ124" Marafioti will be blogging about being a 22-year-old poker millionaire right here on PokerListings.com. Read his first post below and check back for regular updates.

If you told me that on my 22nd birthday I would wake up at the Doubletree in L.A. with none of the $40,000 cash I arrived with yesterday, and a needling feeling of regret as I ask myself a few very important questions, I wouldn't believe it.

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• 6

The PokerListings Run-Good Challenge took place this past Sunday. It was an eventful afternoon and the festivities kicked off with a bit of an unexpected twist.

Originally scheduled as a private event for RSVP'd guests from our Facebook Fanpage, the tournaments password leaked a few hours before tipoff and the news spread like wild fire.

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