New Ocean KO Tournaments, Deeb Says No More POY, & More News
GipsyTeam
Today, 13:04
The dumbest call in history, a new knockout tournament style at GGPoker, Netflix made a series about FTX, Aleksejs Ponakovs revives a dead instagram, and other short news.
Aleksejs Ponakovs decided to revive his Instagram account with a post. This brings him to about five posts over three years.
– I realized this profile doesn’t really explain who I am, so here’s the short version
I started playing poker in 2008. For a long time it was just something I loved doing, until in 2017 I decided to take it seriously
Somehow, that decision turned into a life of high stakes tournaments, ridiculous schedules and way too many airports
Along the way I managed to win 3 WSOP bracelets and become a 2-time Triton Poker Series champion
Those are the easy parts to put on Instagram
The bigger part is thousands of hours playing and studying, losing, winning, travelling, and occasionally wondering why I chose this profession in the first place
Outside poker, I’m a husband and a father. I like sports, good food, wine, travelling and having something resembling a normal life between tournaments
Recently I also joined Clique as an ambassador – another new chapter
I’ve never been particularly good at posting my life online, but I figured it’s time to change that
Poker, travel, life and whatever happens in between.
An Omaha regular playing on CoinPoker under the nickname cumicon (he has no connection to the previous owner of this nickname) shared his latest results :
– Kinda wild month for me at Coinpoker.
Result: +$191,796
Hands: 34,480
EV-adjusted win rate: 25 bb/100
Played a mix of HU, 7max and some 4max. Mostly 5/10 and 10/20, with some losses at 25/50. A lot of HU reg battling in there as well.
It may look strange that I ran below EV, but obviously I must have run incredibly well in ways that all-in EV doesn’t capture. Luck deserves plenty of credit here.
Two weeks ago, ClubWPT Gold players were unable to play in Nevada. At the time, the room was hosting a multi-day tournament, with many regulars advancing to the second day.
"Made a day 2 on Gold before they were kicked out of Nevada," Adam Hendrix had to improvise. "So my Sunday grind is in Narnia aka my car somewhere near the Cali/NV border."
"I'm at the Lotto store," Mike Holtz said, giving away another location. "Security just made me leave and i missed a turn lead (im going to end it)."
“Scrambling a drone as we speak to peek at your hole cards,” joked a reader.
"I like how this is a much more common thing lol. Maybe I should invest in a lounge for ppl out here," Hendrix mused.
Jason Strasser recalled how he ended up being questioned by the FBI for trying to withdraw money from his account:
– The UIGEA passes in late 2006, I yank all my money off of PartyPoker and PokerStars. Netteller freezes some of my money and it takes a while but I finally get my money out.
I take a little break, but after a while it seems clear PokerStars and FTP are going to be fine (5 years later a different story). I’ll keep his name out of it, but another kid at Duke was an online poker killer and I ask him for $200k on PokerStars and he sends it to me.
I ask him check or wire, and he says can I get cash? I have no idea how a bank works but I had the money in my checking account at the student Wachovia at Duke. I tell him if he’s willing to come to the bank and walk out of it with the cash, sure seems fine. Durham was not that nice back then, btw.
My roommate is a fighting type and I bring him along. The three of us walk into the Wachovia on 9th street in Durham. Hi I’d like to take out $200k from my account. Woman at the counter laughs. I hand her my ID. Type type type, she looks at me, looks at her screen, looks at me, and disappears to the back.
I am led to an office and the manager says, you really want $200k cash? And I said yes, I put the money in the bank, and now I want it back, what’s the big deal? He says to come back tmrw and they’ll have it.
Later that night I get a phone call from an unknown number. Hi this is so and so from the FBI, did you try to withdraw $200k from the student Wachovia on 9th street? Yes I did. Ok, can you meet me at that same branch tmrw at 10? Yes sir.
I call up my friend who I owed $200k to. Bro I’m going to kill you. My bad man.
Next day I walk in and there is a velvet rope, nightclub style, leading me to some office in the bank branch. I sit down and the FBI officer has a folder in front of him. I can see some printouts of my Hendon mob page.
He looks at me, kid, I can tell you’re good at poker. You pay your taxes. There is nothing illegal about taking cash out of the bank. But usually the people who want to take lots of cash out of a bank are doing it for the wrong reasons. Why do you need $200k in cash? I explained I owed the money to a friend and he had been with me. Why does he need cash? Me: I’m not sure? But he’s Asian and most Asians like cash?
He tries not to laugh.
Jason, can you do me a favor and write your Asian friend a check?
Yes sir.
And that was the end of that. I’m still super close with my Asian friend and we laugh about the story today.
The Standard Backing twitter authors are confident that Ocean KO tournaments will have a significant impact on the future of tournament poker:
There's going to be an absolutely massive shift on GG to this format over the next 6-18 months. Pokerstars and other competitors will likely be rolling it out once they see how successful they are.
The shift will be similar to that from non-bounty MTTs to PKOs a few years back. That shift resulted in the current schedules that are made up of ~70% PKOs + mysteries.
“PKO has less variance than standard tournament,” one reader suggested, “this should have less than standard bounty.”
"I agree with the first statement," Reishak replied, "in my view PKO<mystery<regular<spaceKO but probably the most important is the size of the tourney?"
On Sunday, Sergi won a $131k bounty in the $100 Ocean KO and changed his mind:
– I change my mind, not much variance.
"People have completely lost their head with Ocean KO," says Lex Veldhuis . "Personally think it's amazing. It's much less random than a Mystery Bounty and it's very clear what you're playing for every hand."
4.4
GGPoker is a Hold’em and Omaha focused site on the Good Game Network. Offering a broad range of playing formats such as Randomised Sit & Gos, All-in or Fold, and 6+ Short Deck as well as fast cash games, and a plethora of tournament series including: GGMasters, GGMillions and Bounty Hunters.
After gaining access to players' computers and cards using the Mesh Agent program, Canadian Paul Gregg robbed over several years, perhaps with other robbers. On the WPN network alone, the criminals got almost $900,000.
An NL2k regular, writing under the nickname Donk_Orleone, complained that he too had become a victim of scammers:
I did get infected by the superuser that could see my holecards which coincided with the biggest downswing in my poker career. I’m still more worried that someone saw my browser history.
A few weeks ago, Donk shared with readers his "dumbest call in poker history."
I forget which dealer did this at Triton, but at 3k BB someone posted their BB and ante in two straight lines (like the picture) and the dealer pulled in the three chips with Triton logos. It has been two weeks and I am still annoyed by this.
"Closest to the dealer as they are at an angle + brand awareness = the smartest choice!," said Luca Vivaldi, the series' chief tournament director, defending his subordinate.
The snippet has already been viewed 11 million times on Twitter.
The series tells the story of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the scandalous crypto exchange FTX (sentenced to 25 years in prison by an American court in March 2024) and his business partner Caroline Ellison (sentenced to two years, released early in July 2026).
The crypto community reacted extremely negatively to the announcement.
"So sick of pseudo-biographic shows about bad people," writes the author of the most-liked comment on Reddit. "I don’t care if it’s poignant or paints them in a bad light. Stop making them important."
"What is this dogshit lmfao?" fumes the creator of the crypto channel Trading Axe (150,000 subscribers). "None of this happened, esp not how it’s being depicted here.
Caroline was a crackhead femcel and joined Alameda Research, she wasn’t exclusively some romantic duo with SBF.
She was a braindead quant at best.
SBF pivoted Alameda Research into becoming an exchange [FTX] after flaunting LARP delta neural leaderboard PnLs and then got his foot in the door with the best VC dealflow.
Not to mention his own vapour scams.
There was never this “us two against the world” bullshit LMAO.
They was just two ugly niggaz fucking high off ket, whilst dumping paper fake BTC to “hunt” high leverage traders on their exchange.
Not to mention Trabucco the homo who was actually the mastermind.
~ Dr. Axius."
Shaun Deeb announced he would no longer participate in the WSOP Player of the Year race. The final straw was the organizers' decision to add a $250,000 tournament to the standings. It was initially announced as an invitational version of the Triton tournament. Professionals could register without restrictions, while amateurs were subject to approval by a special committee. But in September, the World Series of Poker bosses changed their minds and made the tournament open to everyone.
In this tournament, amateurs and regulars will play separately until the prizes are reached.
"Didn’t see this tweet last month but this will prob be the last year I go for WSOP POY," Sean lamented. "They really dropped the ball with this schedule in Bahamas and decisions like this. It’s sad how they don’t confer with any of the contenders or knowledgeable people on what’s best for the race. Just true rake trap which I’m sadly stuck in from the summer."
"When I spoke with Daniel [Negreanu] about if before and he said that Triton isn't part of the stop anymore (so presumably there'd be more lower things), I was excited," recalled Benny Glaser. "But then they just turned it into a glorified Triton stop anyway."
"Hope the amateur side is actually an amateur side," Texas Mike offered a timid hope . "If your main source of income is poker you shouldn’t be able to claim to be an amateur for 1 day. Triton $500k invitational had a bunch of ppl who have made millions and millions of dollars playing poker professionally."
The champion of CoinPoker's The One tournament ($250 buy-in, 24,074 entries, $1 million first-place prize) opened four tables of 25/50 PLO-5 after winning.
TonyTheToenailcollector also has one of the wildest nicknames we've ever seen.
His result in the session is not disclosed.
In the final hand, his opponent zoru99 picked up... . After battling hard and hovering around 20-30BB, it looked like a prime spot for a double up.
Tony hit his set of sevens on the flop though, and closed out the tournament.
4.8
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