American offline grinder Nick Verderamo calls on tournament organizers to think about the players:
– Structures matter.
MGM Opener has 200+ players playing to a winner with 45 minute day 2 levels. Culminating in players playing til 6AM for 300 buy ins.
MGM High Roller closes reg at 11:45PM and bags at 1AM, not close to the $.
MGM 60 person $1500 ITM after 1AM.
– Normalize ending tournaments at a reasonable hour – Christian Harder agrees. – Basically no one wants to play into the middle of a night. The one exception is playing until the winner but even then if it’s going to be past ~3am either fix the structure or make it another day.
– Honestly I do think it’s kinda fun to play until 6am but even I don’t think it’s a good idea – wrote Ike Haxton. – Making amateurs, older players, anyone with health issues, etc play the highest stakes of their lives overnight and into the morning is really rough.
– A vocal minority have ruined structures, – says David “ODB” Baker. – It’s time to stop the bullshit. End late reg times earlier. Have normal end times. The same people complaining about structures needing to be long also complain about rake being too high. Time to tell the chainsaws to shut up.
The 2025 World Series schedule was recently released, where the issue of long days is especially relevant.
Phil Hellmuth immediately shocked the community by announcing that he was withdrawing from the main tournament:
– I am not playing the WSOP Main Event. It has become an “Endurance contest.”
I truly believe that 80% of the players want changes made to the WSOP Main Event. 12 hour days, or longer, for 6-7 days in row, is brutal and disproportionately affects older players.
– My WSOP Main Event solution:
3 days on, 1 day off, 3 on, 1 off
Day 1 (already have a day off)
Day 2 (already a day off)
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
DAY OFF (150 players or less left)
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
DAY OFFAs is, 30% of players (both great and bad players) can’t win due to fatigue.
Chance Kornuth – It’s kinda wild to consider in 1972 the WSOP main event was still $10k buy in, which is ~$75k today. Essentially 5x the annual salary of a top 10% income level individual. No wonder fields were so small (imagine this summer they inflation adjusted to $375k buy in…)"
Kevin Martin – "This is like Michael Jordan skipping the NBA finals. Don’t do this to us Phil."
Josh Arieh – Just here to say, I absolutely LOVE the WSOP grind! Bring on the 14 hour days. Bring on the 25 year old young bucks that play GTO ‘perfect’ I live for this shit! Seeing people yawn and complain about the long hours is pure gasoline thru my veins!
David Baker – I miss the 72 hour sessions at Commerce when we would make fun of people quitting after only 2 days straight. Now if you don’t get your gym, tan, mani/pedi and 12 hours of beauty rest each day you can’t play.
So far, almost no one believes in the seriousness of Phil's intentions.
– He will 100% be playing the event – Phil certainly didn’t convince Joe Ingram.
Matt Glantz immediately offered several bets on the main tournament:
WSOP Main Event Odds...
Female wins the Main Event 12-1
Over 10,500 entries 2-1
Panzica plays the Main Event 14-1
Hellmuth does not play the Main Event 14-1
Sam Panzica was banned permanently from all Caesars Entertainment casinos (and thus the WSOP) in 2013. During the final table of the Main Event, he drank a little too much and cheered too hard for Ryan Riess.
It got to the point where security asked him to leave. Sam sobered up and returned the next day to watch the heads-up. But he was denied entry to the Rio and told that he was banned permanently. According to security, the day before, he jumped up from his seat and started shouting that he would shoot everyone in the room with a Kalashnikov.
Panzica and his friends deny this, and they refused to provide him with surveillance footage. Numerous requests to review the case were also ignored.
This year's World Series runs from May 27 to July 16, with 100 bracelets up for grabs in Las Vegas.
The full schedule can be found on the PokerFuse website .
Blaise Bourgeois noted that many WSOP tournaments have raised the rake:
Pwndidi is excited about the second season of the series "Severance":
– The best tv series in a long time with each episode topping the previous one. I also love the mandatory 3 hour reddit deep dive I go through after every episode to read all the insane theories people come up with
In the midst of the Nacho Barbero scandal, a similar situation happened to high roller Daniel Peterson.
In the closed chat of MTT regulars, screenshots from Daniel's stream were posted, in which he opens the GTO Wizard during the session.
– No, no, Daniel, you can only cheat on ACR. Come on bro...
People sent me thinking you're RTA-ing.
Either you're a silly goofball or doing on purpose to get some online clout.
I know you're just explaining GTO Wizard but FFS don't use your platform to normalize this shit.
"I assume you still watching my stream," Petersen quickly defended himself. "Let me make it clear I never used RTA in my whole life playing online poker. I was promoting my partnerships, show a few min. How GTOwizard works. If I were you I would hav been friendly send you a pm and tell, this is not a good idea. instead suddenly have to blow it up on Twitter."
-I was not watching your stream. I was watching Blindguy instead since we were both deep in Venom. I was sent these on Whatsapp & Discord. You are blocked from messages on twitter which I tried to do first. I did this post because a bunch of people thought you were RTA'ing & it's better I say you are not instead of the random screenshot being shared of you "cheating"."
– Patrick Leonard is reminded the audience – Again… THIS SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE!!!!!!!!!! It’s so easy (even if Daniel wasn’t using it, it shows how easy it is!!)
– Pads serious question. Why do you think GTOW would listen to the angry twitter mob? The time to boycott them was years ago and the poker community did nothing other than embrace it as a study tool and make it super popular among regs and recs alike.
Streamers/influencers using it mid game is undeniably bad for the game we all agree but we're kidding ourselves when we start going after the few who are dumb enough to show their GTOW usage the world.
It's only common sense that tons of people use it for far worse.
So what is left to do? We can either pressure the poker sites into taking game integrity serious or we boycott the rta providers.
The latter won't work because GTOW is only the most common tool out there. People can do the same thing with other tools.
Imo the only thing that can save us is poker sites investing heavily into rta detection/algorithms that detect perfect play.
However since poker isn't nearly as competitive as other games this won't work.
Poker isn't that important to the big players in the online gambling.
So in short. We're fucked. Likely not in the short term but in the medium to longterm online poker will die.
RTA being so easily accessible that any fish can play reasonably well is what will decimate our winrate.
And the game providers will be happy for obvious reasons. That better product would without a doubt also include real time solutions. It's what the market wants.
In September, Chris Brewer and Brandon Adams made a bet, among other bets in the poker community:
"The bet is: he wins big if he laps me twice, and I win big if I avoided getting lapped once," Adams wrote at the time. " Should be a fair bet with good motivation on both sides. My fitness, at 45, has proceeded one prop bet at a time (and yes it's an expensive trainer)."
The race took place at the end of January and ended quite comically.
– Sigh, really frustrated/embarrassed with myself, – wrote Chris Brewer . – Dropped out vs Brandon with 1.5 laps left. Was 300m ahead and forgot we had the straight up bet as well, was not going to lap him though so pulled up. Props to him, gets the full scoop. I’m a fish.
"Lost myself like extra 40%. It’s 11/10 frustrating/dumb/embarrassing," Chris explained in the comments.
Bencb explains ICM very clearly :
– Imagine you are in Las Vegas, and someone farts in Berlin.
Would you smell the fart? No
Does the fart exist? YesThe same works for ICM in Poker Tournaments.
Does ICM exist from the first hand? Yes
Does it impact your strategy? NoBut the closer you get to the fart (or the money bubble), the more significant its impact.
With 75% of the field left, I would consider ICM playing vs. bigger stacks.
With 50% of the field left, you should switch to a more ICM-considerate approach.
33% of the field left, the ICM impact is much more significant than you think.
Let me know if you want more concrete examples for the different stages.
Last week, Ali Imsirovic registered for a $1,500 tournament at Texas poker room Champions Club. But while he was playing, the tournament director approached him and informed him that not only could he not play in the tournament, but he could not even be on the poker room premises .
According to eyewitnesses, Ali took the ban calmly and left quietly. His buy-in was returned.
Chance Kornuth never ceases to admire his other half:
– Find a wife that lets you max late-reg a PokerGO event on your Vegas Valentine’s Day trip 😘 😘
Elky, who was the main driver of the action at the very beginning of the reform of expensive games on GG, and before that acted as the network ambassador in several important negotiations with regulars, suddenly announced that he was ending his cooperation with the site :
– GGPoker and I had an incredible journey together, but our ride has come to an end. That said, I’ll still be playing on GG and WSOP from time to time, so I look forward to seeing you all at the tables!
This year's Super Bowl didn't go so well for Scott Seaver :
– The greatest thing in the world is gambling and winning, but the second greatest thing in the world is gambling and losing.
Rampage has set itself a fairly modest goal for this year :
– My goal was to make $100,000 in poker this year. I only have $340,200 more to go!
Kevin Martin suddenly got rich :
– You ever find money you forgot about?
Over a year since I logged into StakeKings
and there is $2400 sitting there because Cody Daniels binked in January 2024.
“Must be nice lol. You might have an old wallet full of bitcoin.,” one commenter suggested.
– HOLLLLLYYYYY SHIIIITTT! – Kevin wrote shortly after, – This dude's message made me dig up an old crypto wallet in my sock drawer. I thought it had maybe 1k on it. It has 0.37 of a bitcoin!!!!!!!
– I'm freaking out, I'm so happy. But I'm wondering how much money I've leaked away in my life from being a hot mess.
It seems that the second stage of the war with funds has begun on PokerOK, the Russian wing of GG Network . Many players have received "letters of happiness" today.
The screenshot came from LoremCDMX and was later confirmed by high-stakes cash player avr0ra.
