The other day we talked about a high stakes game at the WPT series.

One of the main characters of the broadcast was Erik Persson, a welcome guest in any big game. Eric owns several casinos, so he can afford to play very liberally. Last week, he was part of a record pot on Live at the Bike, where he performed his favorite maneuver – shoving the flop with almost no outs.

Before going to Live at the Bike, Persson recorded a motivational speech

– Just lost $1.2 million last two days in a pretty big game. As long as you get up, you're always undefeated.

Daniel Cates also played in an expensive WPT game.

Although, the main hands occurred when the cameras were already turned off.

“I lost $700k in two streams,” said Johan Gilbert . “But I never give up. Still playing with $500/$1,000 blinds."

“We played $1 million pot with YoH ViraL,” Jungleman reported . – Bet, raise, reraise, call on the J44 flop. Turn T – bet, call, river 8 – all-in, fold.''

So, who won? – some observers didn't understand.

“Not me,” Dan replied.

“If Jungle had called my $300k all-in on the river, there would have been $1.1 million in the pot, but he folded,” Gilbert added some clarity.

“Today I finished minus $190k,” YoH ViraL summed up his performance. – "But at some point it was much more, in the end I played decently. When the stream ended, I entered into two pots for $800k and $600k. The total result for two sessions at the WPT is minus $515k. Next time I will definitely play better.''

The main tournament of this series has become one of the biggest events of the year. Participants made 2,960 total entries, the prize pool was $29 million, and the winner received more than $4 million .

Another WPT hero was the popular blogger Rampage, who won the $25,000 high roller tournament.

Before the start of the tournament, he doubted whether it was worth participating at all.

“It looks like the field is getting closer to 100 entries, maybe I’ll come back later if I sell enough shares,” he wrote when the tournament had already started. – I sold 35% on StakeKings.

The stakes were successfully sold, but Rampage crashed out in one of the first hands:

– ''GG, gave my entire stack to Seth Davis who flopped a straight. I'm thinking of playing again for 100% of myself. You can enter until the end of the dinner break.''

Ethan registered at the very last moment, and the second run was much more successful for him:

– Caught god mode… Starting stack 200k, I already have 1.3 million. If I manage to take 1st place, everyone who bought shares on the first entry will be compensated.

On the bubble of the tournament, Rampage was the shortest, but that didn't stop him from winning the trophy and earning $900k.

“Everyone who took shares on the first entry will receive a full refund and 2x on top,” Ethan kept his promise.

Sean Deeb did not approve of this attitude towards backing and called it a very bad precedent.

Sean and Doug Polk, who joined him, for some reason decided that Rampage took this step not on its own initiative, but under public pressure.

“Consider it a negative freeroll if you get that money back,” Doug Polk warned. – ''If I buy a share in a tournament without specifying the number of entries, it is obvious that I am claiming only the first entry. If you busted out a second time, I definitely would not transfer money to you. It's just not right. Yes, it's a good deed, but you're just giving away $75,000 that belongs to you.

“I don't argue with what you wrote,” Ethan replied. – ''But I have never won when I was selling shares, all my wins were when I played completely on my own. Now I have sold only 25%, that is, for $7k. This is by far my biggest win ever and I'm happy to give a freeroll to a small group of people who believe in me.''

Allen Kessler also waited for an upswing. The other day he hit a royal flush on video poker.

And last night at the WPT he won the $1,000 Omaha-8 tournament. The prize for winning was $52,000.

“In 2009, I already won an Omaha-8 tournament at the Wynn Casino,” Allen recalled . “That time, a heads-up opponent offered me $2,000 to give him the trophy. He wanted to put it in a prominent place in his car showroom. I agreed, but every day I regretted it. Today I finally got my cup.''

Every meeting with Daniel Cates leaves an indelible impression on Chris Hook :

“Went into Bobby's room just as Jungleman was brought a huge plate of chia seeds, I've never even seen one like that. He wanted to order sugar-free chia yogurt, but instead told the waiter "chia seeds, no sugar."

The story of Jungle playing on LSD with Gus Hansen is still immortal in Chris' tweets. We translated it in one of the summer reviews

Daniel Negreanu was given a guest of honor card at the WPT , but got a little confused about the spelling of his last name.

Rob Yong turned to readers for advice:

– My friend played blackjack at Aria, had $200k, bet $2k on two boxes. When he had the last $4k left, he was about to leave, but spun up to $290k. Finished with this. How much would you tip the dealer?

– ''Why so many votes for “nothing”?'' Will Jaffe was surprised.

“That came as a surprise to me, too,” Rob agreed. – ''He left $5k.''

Alex Livingston missed the early days of the WPT for good reason :

– Mom was awarded the Order of Canada ( ed. – Canada's highest civilian award ) for her contribution to the development of anesthesiology and the introduction of simulation training ( ed. – a teaching method in which the student performs actions in an environment that simulates a real one, using special teaching aids ) in Rwanda and Honduras. She is the most hardworking person I know, I am immensely proud of her.

Hustler Casino has finished investigating the sensational hand between Robbie Lew and Garrett Adelstein.

In short, nothing prohibited in Robbie's actions was found, but the organizers noted that they had seriously revised their approach to the security of live broadcasts.

"Now that the investigation is complete, we can finally answer the many questions about Garrett's future on our show," casino officials added. ''It's simple, he can come back at any moment.''

“I was impressed with the security measures that HCL put in place,” Adelstein replied. “But it came as a surprise to me how calm my life has become away from all that is connected with poker. If/when I do want to come back, I'm ready to play HCL.''

Some readers wondered if Garrett plans to return the money or at least apologize to Robbie. But these questions remained unanswered.

Dan Smith and Marcus Goncalves made a bet :

Marcus just announced that he would beat me at tennis with a frying pan. And he added that the fight will not even be close. I had to bet.

In the comments, Dan's chances were not very highly rated.

– Thanks to everyone who felt it necessary to let me know that I am an outsider 🖕 🖕 🖕 (Scott Seaver and Ryan Dowth, this does not apply to you).

Marcus already had the experience in such a bet, he beat the previous opponent with a score of 6-0.

In 2015, in Monte Carlo, Alexei Khoroshenin lost without a chance to Emin Agaev, who also played with a frying pan.

True, unlike Goncalves, Emin was a professional tennis player in the past.

Simultaneously with the WPT series in Las Vegas, Prague hosts the traditional EPT stage, where attendance records were also broken.

The main tournament collected 1,267 entries, broadcasts with hole cards can be watched every day on twitch.

Ben Heath won two €25,000 High Rollers in two days .

Brazilian Rodrigo Seiji also scored two victories.

He became the champion in the very first tournament of the series, the €10k Mystery Bounty, and a few days later he beat all opponents in the €50,000 Super High Roller.

Sam Greenwood also preferred pre-Christmas Prague to Las Vegas. He noticed that in recent years, expensive tournaments in Europe have changed a lot:

– Trends that I noticed in the Super High Roller tournament:

📉 Beer at the table
📉 Number of young Germans
📉 Grass
📈 Diet cola
📈 Number of young guys from Eastern Europe
📈 Nicotine

New Observations:

📈 Number of Brazilians
📈 Balenciaga
📈 Caps
📉 Glasses
📉 Long hair
📉 "He seems to be a crypto billionaire"

In the telegram, we talked about a strange joke by a girl who plays on Hustler streams under the nickname Sashimi.

Kevin Martin had the imprudence to show the Sashimi costume during his stream :

– Lol Sashimi, I was just discussing your appearance in Hustler, and twitch gave me a ban for 3 days.

Sashimi seems to have realized her mistake. On the next broadcast, she came in a more appropriate outfit.