On the last episode Jason Mercier received a warm welcome and wasted no time with sending chips to Tom Dwan. Daniel Negreanu tried to break his high stakes curse and sucked out to Durrr to get his money back. Check out this weeks High Stakes action.

In reports, masked men armed with guns and machetes rushed mid-day Saturday into the casino at the Berlin Grand Hyatt hotel trying to steal about €240,000 in entry fees.

My friends said they heard no guns and saw no machetes being held by the robbers. In fact, a bunch of the poker players didn’t even come in contact with the robbers, who were down the hall at the tournament registration area.

Here’s the scene from behind the tournament registration area, which you can see one of the robbers getting caught by a casino official, who releases him/her when another bandit threatens him with what looks like a rope stand — and definitely not like a gun or machete.

Here’s video of the poker room as the robbery is taking place:

In case you’re wondering, when play resumed tournament directors offered players the option to take their chips back in any active hand and declare it dead. Also, there’s no indication that any prize money is being withheld from any of the tournaments.

Here’s the statement from tournament organizers:

“Yesterday at approximately 2:15 p.m., an armed robbery took place at the European Poker Tour (EPT) event in Berlin. Nobody was seriously injured.

No shots were fired and the suspects quickly fled after a security guard intervened. The police investigation so far has shown that the suspects had a handgun and a machete. Contrary to tabloid reports, no Kalashnikov assault rifles or hand grenades were used. The suspects did not enter the tournament area and the money taken was substantially less than what has been reported.”

“The Professor” Howard Lederer busts out Eli Elezra on the very first hand of Poker After Dark.

A gang of masked robbers stormed in armed with automatic weapons and machetes during this weekends EPT tournament at the luxurious Grand Hyatt hotel and casino in central Berlin. Luckily no one was seriously harmed during this dreadful event, but, it does bring a whole new meaning to the concept of ‘Rush poker’.

The robbers are believed to have gotten away with roughly one million euro.

This video was recorded as it happened on eptlive.com at March 06 2010.

Vanessa Rousso goes up against Father Andrew Trapp, coached by Daniel Negreanu, in this Million Dollar Challenge game.

Phil Laak goes heads-up with Todd Brunson, son of poker legend and “The Godfather of Poker” Doyle Brunson, on High Stakes Poker.

“Poker Brat” Phil Hellmuth goes heads-up with “Mister Cool” Sam Farha for a $213k pot on High Stakes Poker.

It’s worked for Antonio Esfandiari, Josh Arieh and Gavin Smith — and many poker players are beginning to swear by their mindset coach, Sam Chauhan.

Here’s an article from Chauhan.

The mindset coach isn’t new. Professional golfers have used sports psychologists to improve their games for years. But they’re starting to pop up in the poker world — and they’re making tons of money.

The problem is, there’s nothing they teach and there’s nothing in the above article you don’t already know or haven’t already heard.

I don’t know how these guys pay money for an hour of “you can do it” and “believe in yourself” interspersed with tips like “stay positive and avoid tilt.”

Poker can be a tough game, especially the tournament circuit. You can invest 20 hours into a tournament and get bad-beated at the bubble and lose your mind. Sometimes it’s hard, and gut-wrenching.

But to me, Chauhan’s mindset coaching is a bunch of crap.

It’s no secret that you play better poker when your confidence level is high. that if you believe you are going to win, you’ll fare better than someone with low game-esteem levels.

If you need a mindset coach to point out the obvious, mail me a check for $1,000 and I’ll send you a special compact disc recording of my tips to help you achieve your maximum potential.

Tony G wins the 2006 Asian Poker Tour main event in Singapore, walking away with $451,700.

Poker has always been a social game for me, so when I started, I was always generous with my winnings. If I won, I’d buy the beverages, or if I took an exceptionally large pot off a friend, I’d let him have some back. I just played for fun.

But when I started to play for real money, I found that the courtesy I extended to my friends transferred over to the tables.

With a larger stack, I’d call all-ins with garbage. If I sucked out on someone, I’d donk off chips back to them. And I wouldn’t pick on the people to my left and right because we struck up such good conversation.

I like to think I’m a nice guy, but nice guy just doesn’t work in this game.

So a year after picking up poker, I dedicated myself to being a jerk, not in behavior but when it came to winning money, I made a decision to extract every chip I could from my opponents — while still being a nice guy at the table.

For some people, like me, this is harder than imagined. You’re sitting at a table, within a few inches of the people left and right from you. They’re splendid people and now, your job is to crush their spirits.

If you’re a decent human being, then you’ll most likely feel tinges of guilt when you start taking a person’s hard-earned wages. Watching them stand up and walk away with their heads down or even worse, watching them throw a tantrum.— it takes a toll at first.

At some point you have to draw a line. And sometimes, it’s the difference between a winning and losing session. This is a brutal game. They knew the consequences when they sat down.

Resist the urge to pity people. Naturally, when you win, it pisses people off. But if you don’t frustrate people, you aren’t playing this game correctly.