ILX Poker Players Unite

I haven't watched Tom Dwan in a while I had no idea he swore that much

dwan’s really the goat man

lol I remember when he turned 21 and started playing televised games a lot of people said he'd be broke in a year

the percentage of biggest tv hands ever that hes been involved in is very high

that High Stakes Poker hand where he bluffed Barry Greenstein and Peter Eastgate w/ QT on the T22 board is still my favorite televised poker hand. blocker bluffing wasn't really a thing back then, especially not in big 3-way pots. it really blew a lot of minds when people figured out what he was doing

its crazy how much better people are now at poker

Yeah I think your average 25NL reg is probably better now than the high stakes pros were during the poker boom. Thankfully there still seem to be enough whales and shitty rakeback grinders that you can still turn a profit. It’s definitely harder now though. Live poker on the other hand hasn’t really changed much at all.

we need legal online play in order to usher in another poker boom

the other day I listened to a podcast which argued that the biggest change in understanding between now and 20 years ago is in how much variance there really is, especially in PLO where it's possible to have hot or cold streaks which last years. ultimately he says that in the pre-online era it really wasn't possible to play enough hands to get a good handle on who the best players really were, and that virtually every "pro" who played big and made a lot of money pre-Party Poker was either rich enough to ride out the variance or just started on a heater. he thinks there were probably dozens of potential Tom Dwans and Junglemen out there but few of them ran as good as they did where they could really commit themselves to the game. definitely rings true for me at least, had I not run well my first few months playing online I probably would have given it up within a year. poker is so uniquely frustrating when you're on an extended downswing, it just feels like there's nothing you can do but give up.

whenever this thread pops up I end up watching an hour of poker highlights on Youtube and I don't know why - I haven't played a hand in a decade and I was absolutely terrible even among friends who were also bad, I don't have the attention span to play cards for more than like 20 minutes at a blackjack table.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDt90EyZnWA

incredible - was laughing throughout the entire section with Hellmuth and Gus. though his math on the Gus Hansen section is way off - that only applies if you get called by everyone, and if you did technically you'd only have to win once to win the tournament. I would guess just blind shoving every hand in a 6 person sit n' god you'd probably have like a 6-8% chance of winning it all.

god I used to love watching this stuff in college. better than any game show if you ask me. watching these dudes in the WSOP go on 3 day heaters, suddenly finding themselves at a featured table and allowing themselves to think just a little about the possibility of a big payout and some TV fame, only to get doinked by an 8 on the river. after which the camera just lingers on their face as they realize they will almost certainly never have this opportunity again. tough to watch I guess but still, great people-watching. also so many of them were massive dicks so it was easy to figure out who to root for.

https://philgalfond.beehiiv.com/p/elephant-poker-room

galfond could certainly use an editor, but I completely agree. doug is an amazing player and peerless analyst (when he puts work into it…he doesn’t prep as much for his videos these days) but he’s a bully and his non-analysis videos suck

Charlie Carrel is an antivaxxer who I had to block because he shares too much LibsOfTikTok bullshit, seems like one of the last guys who should be talking about "empathy". Regardless Doug is a total dick whose brain has been infected by YouTube disease, he's a great analytical player but shockingly unnuanced when it comes to any other topic.

the JNandez thing was real bullshit too, I primarily play PLO these days so I know his stuff pretty well, dude definitely seems legit to me. Doug feels like he's trying to be some Fantano-type personality whose appeal expands beyond poker while JNandez really is all business. dragging his name through the mud was a real dick move.

I like Galfond, like DNegs he seems like one of the actual good guys in poker, but yeah that sure was a lot of words