A few days ago, Derek Kwan started a Twitter thread that has already received over 2 million views:
– Share a piece of poker lore about yourself ❤️♦️♠️♣️
I’ll start: one time I was playing a cash game with Don Cheadle at the Commerce, and after a series of probably irresponsible but exciting bluffs, he looked at me and said, “I’m just enjoying the show man”.
The commentators' stories turned out to be much more interesting than Derek's.
Dan Fleyshman: Ran $10k up to $740,000 after 2 days of no sleep, only to lose it all in this hand…😢
Straddles are crazy at $100-$200-$400-$800-$1,600 I make it $6,000 with AK spades♠️and get raised to $15,000, 4 bet to $35,000, Kido Pham calls, I call and the 3 better calls
😎Flop 3-7-8 all spades!!!😍
I check, and 3 better all-in $130,000 range, well known wealthy 4 better is all-in with $200,000 range stack and Kido has over $1,000,000 stack on table announces all-in on the button🥳
So I call $700k with nut flush, up against QQ, AA and Kido’s 6-4 of spades.🤩
We’ve been running twice the last 2 days but Kido tells dealer to run it ONE TIME since he only has 1 out.😳The players try to rationalize with him, but he’s being staked, so wants max action and proceeds to tell the dealer ONE TIME!🤯😭💔💀☠️
“That's impossibly brutal,” one commentator said sympathetically. Another commentator posted a well placed Matrix GIF.
YatMuseum: In college, won a WSOP Main Event $11 qualifier on my roommates computer / screen name on PokerStars.
We decided to split his winnings. He lost and binked the very next tournament he played – the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure main for like $1.5m.
– Did he give you anything
– Yes, he gave me $5k. More than generous.
Onlookers quickly guessed that he was talking about Ryan Daut, who beat Isaac Haxton in the PCA heads-up. This was in 2007, when the attitude towards ghosting was more relaxed than it is now.
Mickey Sports: Played in the 5-10 game with a $600 bankroll. Lost every dollar I had to my name in about 4 hands.
Derek Kwan – Must have been a thrill!
Mickey – Young irresponsible kid chasing the action, I remember I took 2 buses to get home after I lost.
Kyle Starburst: I have some good stories, but my favorite is when I saw a guy lose a hand with pocket jacks and then get up from the table and throw them in the trash.
The Saurus – Lmfao my old roommate did something similar in my hometown room. Got his Aces cracked by a friend playing cash, stood up, crumpled the AA in his hand and then left the card room and out the AA under his friends windshield wipers lol.
The Fastest Roadside Guy Alive: 2006 I went out to Vegas for the World Series
I had been playing about 3 year.
I lasted 4 hours in the main event and was about to catch a flight back home.
My girlfriend talked me into staying and sent me 500$ I ended up staying from July until after Labor Day on the 500 dollars. I paid dealer like 140 a week to stay in one of their empty rooms.
Turns out my girlfriend was having relations with her dad’s friend and ends up marrying him. (Ya I know). I ended up marrying their nanny 10 years later.
Levels
Derek Kwan – That was a wild ride.
GlenGarry: One night in 2010, I was on full tilt playing, and I spun up about $10k in cash games. I saw a "pro" Karina Jett sitting alone in a 5/10 headsup table. I joined and proceeded to play insanely reckless, raise reraise, all-in and drained her for around $30k over an hour. She left the table, logged out, and I never saw her online again.
Tyler Phillips – That session probably pushed her into real estate and now she’s for sure way better off than she ever would have been playing poker. Maybe she’s the real winner of that HU match.
GlenGarry – 🤣 True. I'm still a hack low stakes player, and she's probably minted millions in commissions.
Sebastian: I was playing in an illegal place behind a chess club. One old guy died while playing chess in the front, so police came.
All poker players had to hide like 3 hours in silence in a small room till they took the corpse and police left.
Derek Kwan – That's deranged.
Archy: I met a woman dealer on my local poker series. At the last tournament I made a FT where she was dealing, and after we went to my place with her.
After couple of fun nights, she told me to move to Cyprus with her where she had a pretty good offer to deal private games with paid apartment, and that she would bankroll me for the games.
I thanked her and said I would pursue my career.
Man, sometimes I think I should have gone with her to Cyprus.
Derek Kwan – Might have also been murdered, who knows.
Archy – Nah, she was from the local community and other dealers knew her well. The community is not that big, so everyone know each other. Wasn’t about that.
Later on, Archy came through with another story:
Recalled one more. I was playing a home cash game with friends long time ago. Blinds $1/$1 in my local currency. There is that one older player kinda intelligent businessman who is there to show off in front of my friend. He plays ok, and trying to look cool in front of her.
One time he came drunk af with white powder under his nose, started to scream around that he will buy everyone there and that he is soo rich, eating wings, drinking beers and constantly going to WC to resupply his nose. I couldn’t take even 5 min of this stuff, so I left.
Guys who stayed told that he was giving everyone free money like a printer every hand. In the end of the night he fell asleep on 5th box in front of the dealer and vomited himself. That’s where the game ended.
Next time he showed up like nothing happened, still trying to hit on my friend, but we all knew what a dirty prick he was.
Derek Kwan – I can never understand people who get like this in public.
Fastest Payout: A guy I met at college underground poker game turned out to be playing the biggest PLO games in the world on Full Tilt.
It was pretty absurd to be sitting at his house watching him playing against Ivey and other pros.
Derek Kwan – Amazing.
And a little later from Faster Payout...
I grinded my way up stakes on Absolute Poker and lost a ton of money to Potripper playing high stakes limit iykyk.
George_for_now: On PokerStars I ran $100 to $1,200,000 in 3 weeks during which I beat Phil Galfond for $250k in a 9-tabling 25/50 huplo match. think i was down $100k at one point too.
That was a fun day. others were less fun.
Sorta doxxing myself here since there are like 3 ppl in the world this could be but whatever, for the lore!
Derek Kwan – 😮
Dr Justin: I saw a guy lend an aquintance 10k at a poker game, which was clearly an uncomfortable amount for the lender. Borrower was a regular at the game and owned a few businesses, so dude lent him the money.
Later that week, the borrower died of a heart attack out front of the casino. Lender never saw a dime of that money back
Derek Kwan – 😢
PianoByJonathan: Playing a chill $3/$6 limit game, 8 handed w/ seat 5 open. I ask the dealer if I could switch seat after the hand. Some kid takes my old seat and buys in for the min $30. 2 hands later I hit quad kings and he hits a royal. Bad beat jackpot hits for $176k. My best seat change ever.
Derek Kwan – Omg lol.
Halli: In 2008 I played a WSOP 10k PLH, turned a Royal Flush vs Kathy Liebert, did not see it and checked behind on the river 🙈 They made fun of me the whole summer 🤣
Derek Kwan – 😂
Shiz Unit: I once had Aces vs Queens All in pre and the queen of Spades ♠️ that the other player had in his hand was also on the flop! So long story short there was 2 of the same queens in play!🤦♂️ that’s how I got knocked out of the tournament! I was pissed! 😡 🤮
Derek Kwan – Matt Savage, ruling?
Shiz Unit – They essentially told me since we were playing with this deck since the beginning of the tournament that I was out. Then they proceeded to get a new deck and use that for the rest if the tournaments. Crazy shit! 😂
Jeremy Hamey: I busted Soccer great Neymar with only 5 tables left in a WSOP bracelet event. He had armored security and a huge rail behind him all day. He was a nice guy and solid player.
Edward James – Solid player that jams 85s?
Jeremy Hamey – He had just lost a big hand and was UTG with less than 8 bigs. Played with him all day that day, you can trust me.
Derek Kwan – Wowww that’s a huge celebrity encounter!
Ribbi: I played on Paradise Poker back im the day and every so often they would airdrop $35 in my account.
I ran that up to $3500 in a couple weeks and decided I was ready to step up to 5/10 table.
First hand spiked a set of sixes on the flop and got a call, turned quads and shoved all in, guy calls with a set of eights and spikes the last one in the deck on the river to take down over 7k pot.
I didn't play poker for a while after that 😂
Derek Kwan – 🤮
Toya Mcleod: It was 1984 at Adams College, and I won several hundred dollars over the course of the year by teaching my Asian fraternity brother 5 card draw. He still thinks a pair of sevens beats a Frush.
Supreme LA Poker: 2015 – Im playing $5/$10 Doyle Brunson rolls into to Bobby’s Room, I tell the floorman I have his books and can I meet him? He tells Doyle he lets me in. Doyle says “You own my books?”
I said, “Yes I do”
"Then pull up a chair.” 📸🍀
Derek Kwan – Amazing!
Supreme LA Poker – I ask the floor when I walked out Just curious how does one need to play with Doyle He said about $30k minimum He’ll play any game you want ,but he’s waiting on someone right now. I was like damn, what a Boss ♠️
Benny at MoneyForPoker: In 2010, I played on Bwin’s poker software with 0.25 / 0.50 BTC blinds!
GipsyTeam Editor – In 2010, Bitcoin's price was reportedly less than $0.50, closer to $0.30. Early August 2025, its over $110,000 per Bitcoin.
Poker Trader 829: Playing at MGM way back in 2005 when it first opened, Bruce Buffer sits down and played with us for 4 hours. This was before UFC made it big. He gave 4 of us front row tickets to the UFC fight on Sat. GREAT GUY! all time fav to play with.
Derek Kwan – I actually got to watch a UFC fight on TV with him when we played a cash game together! Super nice guy.
Jeff Boski: With blinds at $200/$500/$500 there's an open seat at my right which gets filled by an African American gentleman wearing gym shorts, a hoodie on top his head, a Rolex, and a diamond bracelet. He's on his phone for the next 30 minutes never posting his blind and never paying attention to the actions, other than cursing his bad luck when he doesn't get a playable hand. The man on my right looks familiar and when he talks his voice has a familiar country grammar to it.
Although its 70 degrees outside, in the Encore, it's getting hot in here.
That's right, none other than Nelly is sitting to my right.
Aaron Barone – Definitely should have asked if he wanted to take a ride with you.
Derek Kwan – Haha I played with in a WSOP event and some guy sitting at the table after like 20 mins said, “who is everyone taking pictures of?”
Matthew Hochban: Met and played $5/$5 PLO with Brad Booth once at Edgewater Casino in Vancouver 15 years ago.
Derek Kwan – Whatever happened to him??
Matthew Hochban -
Limit Hold'em legend Kyle "KPR16" Ray: After Black Friday, I moved to Montreal. I had been playing poker for 5-6 years and had worked my way up to $500/$1k LHE on PokerStars. In one session, Phil Ivey sat out and wrote in the chat "you're too good." I even saved a screenshot.
In fact, he just went out to dinner that night and we played each other a few more times. But he really stopped giving me action in LHE when we started playing Omaha Hi-Lo in parallel, where my edge (against him) wasn't as big.
Kyle was bombarded with questions in the comments.
– Why did you quit poker?
– For me personally, there was less and less online action. I met a girl and wanted to go back to the US. I focused on my family and new career.
– Do you miss poker?
– Sometimes I miss the battles with the best, but I don’t miss the stress of poker at all. And maybe this would have shocked my 20-year-old self, but family life in the suburbs is pretty cool.
– What are you doing now?
– Since 2018, I have been working in the financial sector – planning and investments. Last year, I opened my own company.
– Have you always played only limit?
– I tried playing NL at the very end of my career, but no one wanted to play with me anyway, even though I was terrible. Apparently, they didn’t like my overbet pushes.
– There is no action at all in LHE now?
– I don’t know. I had fun playing 80/160 at the Bellagio for a while during the last World Series. There were 2-3 tables playing every day while I was there.
– Is Sallywoo still playing?
– To my knowledge, no.
– Who was stronger in HU – Ivy or Hoss ( Ed. – Matt Gavrilenko).
– Hoss.
– It must be cool to win money from Ivy himself?
– He didn't have much of a lead. If he was leading during a session and his opponent then fought back, Ivey would leave almost immediately. Often our matches would end as soon as he lost one stack (20-30 bets).
– Why did he do that? To make you tilt?
"I think he knew I was the favorite, but people often play worse when they lose. He took advantage of that. And he always had a lot of other action.
– Ivy said you played well? He was just making fun of you. Who the hell are you?
– He's too well-mannered to laugh at his opponents. And I'm just a regular guy who played limit games.
We talked to a veteran of limit games about his second WSOP victory, a difficult fold against Isildur, and Hellmuth's strange play. We also found out what a professional jeweler thinks about WSOP bracelets, and why Hold'em is boring.
Charlie Carrell: I accidentally put my last 5k into a 5k tournament. I thought some people owed me money but they didn't. I was wildly disorganised back then.
I won the tournament for 180k, and then went on a 3-4mil upswing.
I definitely ran too good at points in my career.
Eddy Gecko – What was the plan if you busted, just drop down in stakes again?
Charlie Carrel – I could charge 400/h for coaching back then so I had a backup to get me back to 5/10 live.
