Ben Wilinofsky announced the death of the poker dream:
"The poker boom is not coming back. It was fueled by a dream that has been killed and dissected, deliberately. That an everyman had a puncher's chance to get in the ring with the "best in the world" and emerge triumphant and rich.
Post-UIEGA the poker world obsessed about skill. Other gambling was gambling, but poker was mindsport, intellectual combat, different from those other games. It was a vain argument that was always going to fall on deaf ears trying to convince some nebulous governmental "they."
But the lifeblood of poker was and is people who want to gamble. People who want to play a fun game and not take it so fucking seriously. There is no poker product for those people. When was the last time you made it thirty minutes through a broadcast without technical analysis?
Solver talk might be interesting to strivers and grinders but it's inscrutable to people who don't know poker yet, and it's intimidating. It makes the game sound like you have to do a lot of boring fucking work before you sit down and play. That's not much of a sales pitch."
Ben's tweet garnered 344,000 views and sparked a lively discussion.
PokerCaddie: This is why a lot of casual poker players have chosen PLO. Smaller edges, more of a fighting chance….without even knowing you aren’t that good (because you win big pots on occasion). Cater to this mindset…any form of poker can attract casuals.
Chairman Tot: It’ll come back if it was suddenly legalized across all states. Even if individual states legalized it, those states would be amazing. E.g. Stars games in Philly were incredible when it was legalized. As it is, smaller sites that are borderline illegal have amazing games.
Editor – It's true that spots like poker clubs have amazing games, but it's super-important to find trusted ones. GipsyTeam can help you find these games, and enter much softer player pools. Ask us which mobile poker clubs you should be playing in.
Jesse Lonis was offended by the lack of likes:
"I may have to be done with Poker social media. How can I compete? I won a Triton Main Event for $3.4 mil and another bounty tournament for $1.5 mil in the same week and I can’t compete with the numbers of someone winning a pineapple tourney for $2,000. No offense to Abby Merk, it has nothing to do with you! It’s a ME problem. 😂"
Abby "Abbypoker" Merk won the $100 buy-in Atomic Pineapple tournament at the APT Championship Series.
Her victory photos have garnered 720 likes , while Jessie's posts rarely get more than 300.
"I don't know if you're trolling or not," Shaun Deeb tried to support Jesse. "But why do you care what other people think? You have three daughters, a wife, and a ton of money. Enjoy your life, and everyone will forget about the likes the next day."
"Thanks, Sean, because this post really shows how much time I spend with my wife and kids." Lonis didn't appreciate the help. "You went to Rozvadov to win a fake bracelet in a 30-player tournament. You could have stayed home with your two sons and wife. Why do you care about those bracelets?"
“It seemed to me that Sean wanted to sincerely support you,” Chris Hunichen said, not understanding the aggressive reaction.
Ryan DePaulo of CoinPoker had some sage advice:
"I get it but look how hard Daniel Negreanu works at YouTube with volume and effort. Being great on the felt does not equal interest in videos. But just like poker if you show up consistently and do your best it WILL work out.
In the meantime try yoga pants."
Alexandra Botez also gave a good take:
'“How can I compete?” Well here is a comparison of your YouTube channel VS Abbey’s channel. I had to stop posting screenshots of Abbey’s videos cause she had too many. Your poker skills are incredible and inspiring but social media in and of itself is its own job and you have to work at that the same way you do with poker."
The WSOP Paradise Series has kicked off in the Bahamas. The first bracelets are awarded in high-stakes tournaments held in conjunction with the Triton Series.
Matthias Eibinger won the $75k buy-in PLO tournament , his first PLO tournament. He tied with Mike Watson heads-up.
Sam Soverel emerged as the strongest player in the $100k PLO.
The $50k one-day turbo high roller tournament lasted 12 hours. The champion was WSOP Circuit Cyprus runner-up Daniel Rezai, who defeated Mustafa Kanit heads-up. Paul Phua finished third, and the Moncek brothers also made the final table.
"Final tabled the 50k turbo with my brother!" Michael wrote after the tournament . "What an unreal experience. Didn’t mind busting since it meant Tyler was closer to his first bracelet! GG Tyler 👊"
The $250k invite-only tournament kicked off yesterday. It attracted 49 amateur-regular pairs, and reentries increased the number of entries to 133.
At the end of the opening day, only two players considered professionals were in the top 10 of the chip count: Kayhan Mokri and Dejan Kalajurdjevic.
The winner will receive $7,725,000.
The game features Alexander Zubov, Mikita Bodyakovsky, Ramin Khadzhiev and Christoph Vogelsang in his usual attire.
Artur Martirosyan and Alexey Ponyakov were eliminated at the beginning of the second day.
Daniel Negreanu is still around. He's been vlogging regularly since this series.
Michael Mizrahi also joined the blogging team; his episodes are broadcast on the GG channel.
Michael missed the $250k tournament, but played his first GG Millions online yesterday.
With all the high rollers in the Bahamas, the EPT Prague organizers are having problems.
The €10,200 Mystery Bounty attracted 32 entries, the €20,000 buy-in tournament attracted just 8 entries, and the €50,000 Super High Roller tournament failed to take place at all.
Niklas Ostedt had to run around and personally lure the participants, but even that didn't help.
At the same time, there are no problems with attendance at the lower-stakes tournaments. The €1,650 PS Open attracted over 3,000 entries, and the €2,700 buy-in tournament attracted over 1,000.
Beriuzy witnessed a strange situation:
"20 years of playing online poker & never saw something this absurd.
Reg closed early due to "glitch" & Proudflop has dream scenario..."
"Then it even gets BETTER 🤣"
"Did he win?" the commentators asked.
– yea, was basically impossible to lose.
"It's not a glitch," Ghilley wrote. "Stars always closes registration automatically when there's only one person left to win."
"This happens quite often," Pwndidi confirmed. "We've complained repeatedly, but unfortunately, they do nothing."
Rampage bet $5,400 live and won $10.80:
"Thank you FanDuel for the free money lying on the ground, what could possibly go wrong?
“Money laundering,” commentators suggested.
– Ethan what if they come at you to pay taxes on that 5410 lol.
Pedro "Biluzin" Toledo won the CoinPoker Cash Game Championship .
"In 2024, he was still playing blitz200 for rakeback," BootieInUFace wrote about the winner on Telegram.
Toledo is rumored to be one of the most successful NL2k players this year.
In July, he released a Portuguese-language podcast titled "Pedro Toledo: Winning Over $400k at High Stakes in 2025."
Read ReadFormer champion Owen Messer remained in contention for victory until the very last hands. In one session a few days before the championship's end, he won $178,323 and surged into the lead.
With 20 hours to go, PR0DIGY took first place.
At the start of the final session, players traded first place several times. The leader immediately sat out and waited for his competitor to overtake him. Two hours after the start, Biluzin took a confident lead and never had to return to the game. He played only 86 hands in his final session.
PR0DIGY had a poor ending and ended up finishing in 3rd place.
Linus Loeliger lost the most, both in terms of EV and real cash.
Unfortunately, PR0DIGY could recreate the results of the first championship, which took place at the beginning of the year. Although, he won far more in that event.
Seth Davis wrote about his love for the poker series:
Some of the things I look forward to most on the poker circuit:
– Monaco views
– Monaco tennis courts
– Arts Barcelona breakfast buffet
– Montenegro balcony chillin'
– Honest Greens in Barcelona
– Bahamas beaches and water
– Cyprus ocean in the summer
– Merit Cyprus foodWhat about you?
Patrick Leonard compiled a slightly more down-to-earth list:
– When the monitor is shaking after another 80/20 loss on ACR
– When I play like Addamo in prime for four hours, build up a huge stack, and then go all-in for 200bb on six with 85o because it's a mystery bounty
– When I have 99% on the flop in a GG tournament, and somehow on the turn it becomes 51%
– When I only have 2 minutes to go to the toilet because I shoved 99% of my stack right before the break and my opponent is deep in thought
– When I get 3-bet by cdarwin
– When I go all-in for 14bb, only to realize a moment later that I actually have 140bb
– When, at the most unexpected moment, RomeoPro bets 14 pots on an 882 board
– When friends check against each other with the nuts, and then innocently say that they don’t know each other.
Jeremy Ausmus realized he couldn't do anything except play poker:
– “Poker players are good at exactly one thing and terrible at everything else.”
Saw this in a chat yesterday and it made me laugh. Is there truth to this?
I like to think I’m fairly "normal" by industry standards, but honestly this hit home. I definitely struggle with some basic life skills at times, and I know when looking around the poker room some struggle much more.
Juan Pardo had a successful recent high roller series at GG, winning five tournaments in a week (four of them with a $10k buy-in):
The World Series of Poker organizers proudly announced a new feature in the WSOP+ app: any player can enter their stack size in the prize pool and see its value based on ICM.
Professionals did not appreciate the new product.
"For the integrity of the game, this is probably worse than allowing preflop charts," Sam Greenwood suggested. "While this is just advertising, it's hard to say how the feature will actually work. It looks like calculating the ICM value of your stack will require other players' stack data, which they will also have to enter manually. Simply wonderful."
Victoria Koren played poker for the first time in many years :
"This is how out of touch I am these days. Playing a poker tournament – my first in maybe three years – on home turf, the guy in the 2 seat tells me the guy in the 8 seat won the WSOP main event. I laugh along. Then they all show me photographs. He really did! I had NO IDEA."
"Seems implausible that you wouldn't recognise the Grinder / he be in the UK. Who are you talking about?" the commenters were surprised.
– It was Espen Jorstad.
"The same thing happened to me," Chris Moneymaker complained. "I was sitting next to the world champion and didn't even know it. And I never quit poker."
The user who exposed the fraud of superuser MoneyTaker69 in early 2024 has opened a new thread on 2+2.
Read ReadYou can view the new thread here:
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/gg-poker-moneytaker69-superuser-amp-new-statistical-anomalies-1853319/
Since then I’ve run large-sample statistical analyses on a massive GG database of hands from winning regs (winners post-rake). Looking at overall run patterns – running under/above all-in EV, BBJ runouts, pure cooler spots – I’m seeing statistically significant deviations that effectively compress the edge between good and bad regulars by up to 3 bb/100 over big samples.
Combined with the already known PVI system (which clearly works to reduce the gap between winners and losers), this doesn’t look like normal variance but like a systematic reduction of regs’ edge.
At an appropriate time I’ll leak the full analyses (graphs, distributions, methodology, raw numbers) so anyone with a solid stats background can verify or try to break the conclusions.
We'll stay tuned and let you know when more is released.