A Stabbing in LA, Sammy Farha Banned from Cardroom & Palma's Huge Fold
GipsyTeam
Yesterday, 13:13
From Sammy Farha’s lifetime cardroom ban to a $2M PLO5 session and a stabbing, here are some of the biggest stories from poker social media in October.
One of the most surprising, yet somehow a little unsurprising news, is that Sammy Farha has allegedly punched a dealer.
Picture the scene: It’s 3:30 AM on October 21st, and a PLO game is underway. Sammy is not even in the hand.
A witness apparently saw two other players all-in on the flop, cards face up. After the pot was shipped to the winner, Farha supposedly accused the dealer of taking cards out of the muck.
This annoyed the losing player, who told Farha that his cards were exposed from the get-go. Then the dealer got involved, and Sammy apparently told him to "shut the f**k up" and "I'm gonna beat the living f**k out of you."
Security was called over, but a witness said Sammy sidestepped them and punched the dealer in the chest. Or at least that’s what some places reported. It’s more like a light push.
The dealer is Doug Caillier. He’s actually been in the game just as long as Farha, and even dealt in the Binion’s era WSOP in the 1990’s.
Farha was apparently banned for life from the establishment. Time to call him... Whammy Farha?
Chris Brewer ran the second-best hand in poker into the best hand in poker, and didn’t take it well.
“This might be the worst play of the entire tournament. I am so f**king bad.”
But was it really that bad? Probably not. Chris did face a 4-bet before committing, but it’s not the year 2000. A 4-bet is not always aces, except this time.
Brewer busted just before the money. Sam Laskowitz finished 2nd, and Sean Winter won Event #10: $51,000 NLH for $620,000.
Another massive story of October was Kevin "KGAO" Gao claiming that his girlfriend stabbed him. This alleged stabber is Lynne Ji, a regular at Hustler Casino Live and other streamed shows.
The pair were romantically involved, off and on. When Kevin found out that she was apparently doing some escort work on the side, he confronted her. “Even though we were officially not together, I mean, it didn't feel great," Gao admitted.
“I say, 'No, I just want some space right now. Can you go somewhere else?’ She refuses, and eventually she comes at me and kicks or hits me. I restrain her, and she’s really trying to hurt me at this point, and she takes a really hard bite into my leg.
So I pull her hair to get her off me, and then she gets off and says, “Oh, you’re going to regret that,” and just walks out of the room. I’m like, what the hell? I look out the door, and she’s reaching for a kitchen knife.
At that point, I lock all the doors and call 911. About 15 seconds later, I hear her trying to kick down the door. I run over and hold the door closed. I can see the knife stabbing through it.
At some point, she’s able to wiggle the lock open, and she chases me into a corner. I trip over something and fall, and I’m on the ground. She reaches up and stabs down. I was pretty lucky because I was able to roll over onto my right shoulder, so she caught me here. After that we were wrestling. I get the knife back, and I sprint downstairs, leave, and the cops show up.”
Lynne is out on a reported $1,000,000 bail.
Giselle54 got close to $2 million in a single session of 5-Card Omaha on CoinPoker. Most or all of it seems to have come from yolof1.
The site put a 30-minute video up on Twitter, with about 60 hands of $500/$1,000 and $1,000/$2,000 in the VIP Arena.
We covered Giselle54 in our recent post about the top cash game winners of 2026. They turned a $2,000,000 downswing in September into a $6,000,000 upswing.
On the Hold'em side of the Arena, LLinusLLove and PR0DIGY were spotted at $300/$600.
Sexiest poker player of all time? The people World Poker Tour asked said it's not Phil Ivey, or Patrick Antonius, or Alex Foxen.
It’s the world record WSOP bracelet holder Phil Hellmuth.
These answers seem coached, but we’ll let it slide for humor’s sake.
Jeremy Kaufman might not be a household poker name, but his passing is being felt by the community. Matusow called Jeremy his “closest friend in life. Garrett Adelstein called him the life of the party. Phil Hellmuth remembered that his needles felt like “a luxurious warm bath”.
For context, here’s one of those needles delivered to Ryan Feldman after an ace-high call-down.
Ryan Feldman left the longest goodbye, looking back on a treasured friendship with Jeremy.
A very close friend of mine, Jeremy Kaufman, passed away suddenly over the weekend. Jeremy was an integral part of my poker network in LA and Chicago.
Jeremy was a very successful wealthy businessman with 3 teenage children and left us way too early at the young age of 56. He certainly didn’t act his age. He was always the life of the party. He always had a smile on his face and made people laugh. I’m certain he was the most loved person in our poker group. Everyone loved spending time with him.
His attitude at the table was perhaps the best of anyone we know. Never once did he ever complain about losing a hand. No matter the size of the pot or how bad of a beat it was, he would lose graciously with a smile. He popularized the phrase “fair” as a comment after an all in run it twice situation where the result clearly wasn’t fair. Sometimes players who didn’t know him would say “wtf how was that fair” and we’d have to explain that it’s what we say no matter how fair or unfair the hand is. He also popularized “drats” as a comment after losing a big pot.
Jeremy really was a one of a kind unicorn. His humor, his positive attitude, his words of wisdom, his caring for all of his friends made him so amazing to be around, whether it was poker or vacations or dinners or just phone calls.
I met Jeremy in 2020 when Phil Hellmuth brought me into his online poker group during COVID with Danielle, Matusow, Jason Otto, Markus, DC Lawyer, etc. Of course I knew who Jeremy was from his infamous appearance on Poker Night in America. We quickly became good virtual friends and the first time we met in person it was like we had known each other forever. He treated everyone with so much love. A year or 2 later, he became an integral part of the Chicago poker community with Luiz, Ala, Texas Mike, Pink, etc. So many times he told me how thankful he was for us putting this group together and how poker was the most fun thing in the world for him and how much he loved our group. He started off as a competitive recreational player. By the end, he was considered one of the best players in our group. It shows how insanely smart he was for such a successful businessman to teach himself without coaching how to go from a fun player to one of the toughest players in the high stakes Chicago scene.
Jeremy, we will all miss you so much. It’s hard to even put into words how much we will miss you. Getting that call was one of the worst feelings of my life. I cannot imagine what his family is going through right now, especially his children. Remember to hug your loved ones every day and live life to the fullest.
Andrew Fitzgerald, professional coach and tournament player, announced to Twitter that going too Game Theory Optimal is costly.
GTO is making most of you worse.
Every great session requires the kill shot.
You have to do the disgustingly disrespectful fold.
You have to go for the absurdly large value bet.
Most of you have let "GTO" convince you that you're never allowed to do that.
I have never met a great GTO coach who doesn't regularly exploit the living shit out of his opponents.
But you're listening to dorks who have never paid a bill off of poker tell you that you're unbalanced.
“Sharp point,” agreed Robin of Poker x AI, “but balance still matters, over exploiting can bleed out if opponents adjust.”
“Agreed,” Alexander replied, “but balancing should mostly be done with the people you play with the most.”
A high-level fold comes from an unexpected place. It’s Nick Palma vs Vitalijs Zavorotnijs in Event #4: $10,500 No-Limit Hold'em at the Poker Masters. Six players remain, with $224,000 for first.
The turn card is good for both players, but a little better for Vitalijis.
After tossing in two time banks, Palma tosses in his cards. Commentators called it the fold of the series.
The fold allows him to continue to third place, where he cashes for $104,000.
“Some of the most memorable poker hands are when someone makes a big fold and turns out to be wrong. This isn’t one of them. It takes a rare level of discipline to make your hand, trust your read, and still find the fold, especially on stream.”
