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What’s Short-Deck Poker?

Poker has a problem.
Short-Deck is the answer.
Also known as, Triton Hold’em, Short-Deck has its roots in Asia, where successful businessmen, and poker lovers, Paul Phua and Richard Yong, experimented by removing a few cards from the standard 52-card deck, increasing the likelihood of strong pre-flop hands.
Out went the 2s.
Then the 3s.
Then the 4s.
Finally, the 5s.
The net result, was a 36-card deck – a Short-Deck – and the outcome was incredible.
One of the problems that amateurs have when playing superior players, especially professionals, is they play with a broad range of starting hands because their primary focus in the game is to enjoy themselves, and you can’t do that if you fold. The better player begins with a narrower range of hands, and this disparity means the amateur ends up with the worst of it more often than the pro.
Folding isn’t fun.
Neither is losing all the time.
Paul and Richard found that by removing the lower half of the cards, they increased the likelihood that an amateur would receive two very playable starting hands.
As the former World Series of Poker (WSOP), Player of the Year, Ben Lamb, mentions during his first experience of Short-Deck during a 2018 Triton Poker Series in Jeju, South Korea.

Ben Lamb - Short-deck at Triton Poker Series Jeju 2018 — Ben Lamb at Triton Poker Series Jeju, South Korea (July 2018)

“The first thing you notice when you sit down to play Short-Deck is the equities run much closer than No-Limit Hold’em.”

And the closer you get, the more often a weaker player wins, and the more likely he or she is to remain in the game. At a time when poker’s ecosystem is under pressure from advancements in technology and available poker resources, with players getting improving at a rate never before witnessed, Short-Deck is fixing a leak that is in danger of drowning the game.

The Rules of Short-Deck Poker

The variant featured in Triton Poker Series events is called Short-Deck, Ante-Only. There is no small or big blind, and instead everyone has to post an ante that increases each level in the same way blinds do in a standard game of No-Limit Hold’em. The player on the button posts a double ante.
Each player begins with three bullets.
Stack sizes can vary, but in the early events at Montenegro and Jeju in South Korea, each bullet was worth 100,000 in chips. And loading these three bullets into the chamber is important, as Ben Lamb explains.

“You have to put your stack in more often than the other games. That’s why they give you three bullets, that’s smart.”

Like No-Limit Hold’em, the player to the left of the button begins the action by calling the size of the double ante, raising or folding. The action continues in sequence as per No-Limit Hold’em rules. Post flops actions plays the same.
Here’s Ben Lamb again to give you a few tips.

“You need to see a lot of flops. There are more passive ways to play the game, like limping, but this an action game. Stay away from dominated hands. Recognise the difference between shallow and deep-stacked play.”

During the early action, you can be forgiven for thinking you have walked into a game of deuces wild. All-in and calls are common, the action is crazy fast, and there is a lot of laughing and joking around the tables. But once the game gets deep, you need to switch gears, and this is why the game suits both skilled and weaker players alike.
And the best thing about Short-Deck is it’s a new game. It’s perfect for local home games where you can experiment with the rules and formats, while keeping an eye on the Triton Livestream to see how the Godfathers of the game continue to evolve.

Short-Deck Poker Hand Ranking (Best to Worst)

Royal flush
Straight flush
Four of a kind
Flush
Full house
Straight
Three of a kind
Two pair
One pair
High card
It’s important to remember that a flush beats a full house. That’s the only hand ranking difference when compared to No-Limit Hold’em.
One of the features of Short-Deck, is unlike Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO) where players have to learn to use four hole cards, Short-Deck is more suitable for people who have grown up playing the more familiar No-Limit Hold’em.
A few things to note:
Pocket aces come along 1 in 105 hands, not one in 220, but they are cracked way more often.
Straight draws arrive on the flop 48% of the time, not 31%.
The odds of flopping a set are 18%, and not 12%.
The other change to be aware of is the role of the ace. As in No-Limit Hold’em the ace plays both low and high when creating straights, meaning it becomes a five when 6,7,8,9 is on the board.

Triton Poker Series Spearheads Short-Deck Poker Trend

After playing Short-Deck in their local home game, and seeing the improvements in sociability and joy firsthand, both Paul and Richard decided to test the new variant at a professional level.
The Triton Poker Series was born.
Taking place in some of the most salubrious destinations around the world, the Triton Poker Series is a high stakes series that pits some of the wealthiest amateurs against the very best professionals in the game.
In 2018, at the Triton Poker Series at the Maestral Resort & Casino in Montenegro, Paul and Richard hosted a HKD 250,000 (USD 32,000) and a HKD 1,000,000 (USD 127,000) buy-in Short-Deck, Ante-Only event, put the word out, and hoped they would come.
Come they did.
The most feared and respected poker player in the modern game, Phil Ivey, beat 61 entrants to win the HKD 4,749,200 (USD 604,992) first prize in the HKD 250,000 (USD 32,000) version, and Jason Koon defeated 103 entrants to bank the HKD 28,102,000 (USD 3,579,836) in the HKD 1,000,000 (USD 127,000) version, in only his second ever Short-Deck event.
Not only did the amateurs love the game, so did the pros, and so did the poker community, who tuned in to watch the livestream in their droves. There had not been this much buzz over a format of poker since the Texas Road Gamblers decided to add the words ‘All-In’ to the game of Limit Hold’em.
Paul Phua and Richard Yong had achieved the remarkable.
Short Deck became the antidote to a game that was in danger of turning into a robotic, emotionless, and dull experience.
“People who fold too much are going to get eaten up, you have to be prepared to gamble,” Ben Lamb.
But how do you play this game?

The Future of Short-Deck Poker

The Triton Poker Series Livestream numbers show that this is a variant of the game that the poker community adores. It turns quite a boring spectator sport into one of the most illuminating.
All sports and games have their magic moments.
The goal.
The punch.
The all-in and call.
There are more swings than a kid’s playground, and for this reason, Short-Deck poker is going to be here to stay, but where does it take it’s seat in poker’s landscape.
Back to Ben Lamb.
“It will grow, especially in America. I am going to try and help that happen by running games at ARIA and my local game in LA,” says Lamb, who played the variant in Jeju, for the first time, and fell in love with it. “It fits a niche. Amateurs want to enjoy themselves. Pot Limit Omaha cash games tend to be more fun for amateur players, but Short-Deck takes it to another level. More gambling. More fun. The edges are smaller, and that’s a great thing for the long term ecosystem of poker. Just because your a pro it doesn’t mean you don’t like to gamble. I love to flip and gamble.”
Poker’s purpose is to enthrall, enlighten and entertain.
Somewhere along the way we forgot that.
Short-Deck won’t let us make the same mistake twice.
Suddenly, it feels like poker has no problem at all.

Sam Trickett = $20,840,004.
Stephen Chidwick = $17,537,167.
At their live tournament peak, Trickett and Chidwick are like two finely tuned racehorses, blinkers ON, one direction – straight past the post.
And when it comes to the 3:45 Hendon Mob England All-Time Money List Stakes, Trickett has a slight lead, but there is a Red Rum feel about Chidwick, and I wonder how many more hurdles the pair will vault before the man from Deal takes the lead?
Does it matter?
Yes.
Trickett is a born winner.
Being number one is important.
And Chidwick?
Have a read of this before you answer that question.
I grab Chidwick during the break on Day 1B of the HKD 100,000 (USD 12,500) Short-Deck, Ante Only tournament at the Triton Poker Series in Jeju, South Korea.
Chidwick also featured at the Triton event in Montenegro, bubbling both No-Limit Hold’em games, preferring to give the Short-Deck Ante-Only a wide berth.
So what’s he doing in the deep end of Day 1B?
“To be honest the buy-in is a big factor,” Chidwick tells me before continuing. “This was an HKD 100,000 (USD 12,500), and the smallest event in Montenegro was HKD 250,000 (USD 32,000). It’s a bit more friendly to flick it in here and not be as worried about the result, have fun and see how it feels.”
The first time I interviewed Chidwick, I would guess his live tournament earnings totalled a few million. We recorded the interview via Skype. I doubt he will remember. Our first face-to-face was the World Poker Tour (WPT) Alpha8 in London. By this time, Chidwick had shifted gears and was a regular in the big games.
I wonder if he still has to pinch himself when he pauses for a moment realising he’s just paid a million bucks to play a game of cards?
“The buy-ins everywhere are getting pretty crazy,” says Chidwick. “Back when I started playing, a $10k was a huge event. Today, my average buy-in is $30,000, and I am at like $4.5m in buy-ins for the year. It’s crazy when you think how much money you’re putting down at these stops. Obviously, a lot of it’s invested money. I’m not putting it all down myself, but it’s still pretty crazy.”
The question is hackneyed, but I feel I have to ask it.
It’s such an obvious question.
It would take me ten months of writing articles like these to make the same money, Chidwick averages in buy-ins.
Does it feel different, playing in the bigger games?
“I was surprised playing the One Drop,” says Chidwick. “I was expecting it to feel different than it did. I sat down; I am playing against the same players, I have the same chips in front of me – it feels the same once you’ve played as much poker as I have. When you sit down and are dealt cards you’re just thinking about the decisions.”
Ah, decisions.
The pesky blighters that hang over us like a Damocles sword on a daily basis.
Should I go to the dentist to get these Goddam mercury fillings extracted?
Should I pick that empty coke can off the floor even though it’s not mine?
Should I play a $12,500 buy-in re-entry in a format of poker I have never played?
“It’s really fun,” says Chidwick reacting to my enquiry into his first Short-Deck experience, “Definitely, kind of confusing in some spots, especially when you see five-way multi-way hands, and you’re trying to figure out how likely it is that people have certain things. It’s definitely a game I would like to get better at and learn to play well.”
And how exactly do you study a game that has more bear traps than a Montana store called Grizzly Pete’s Bear Traps and More Bear Traps?
“There aren’t as many tools out there for Short Deck as there are for regular No-Limit Hold’em so you can’t study in the same way,” says Chidwick. “You can do some simple stuff with equity calculators by taking out the dead cards. I haven’t been able to study it very technically really. Otherwise, it’s about paying attention, what are people showing down and what is each hand worth.”
When you ask someone who has played Short-Deck for the first time to describe their experience, the word most commonly used is ‘fun’. You heard Chidwick use it earlier.
When you stand within a whisker from the player’s earlobes; watching; learning, you can feel the buzz around the table when suddenly, everyone moves all-in with every conceivable type of hand you can imagine.
There is music from the sun.
The raindrops hit the ground like Dave Grohl crashing a stick into a cymbal.
Everyone wants to dance.
And.
I.
Think.
Why didn’t we play this in our local $1/$1 home game?
Sure, right now we are witnessing the higher end of the spectrum, but surely this game could quickly catch on to become the SR-71 Blackbird of poker.
Cadillac’s are so 1970.
“It’s a good question,” says Chidwick before taking a pause. “I don’t think it’s spread even in cash games anywhere else except Asia. I am not sure if it would work if it showed up at the EPT or WSOP. I think people would enjoy it. It’s tough to jump in if it’s only the high rollers, maybe if they tried to run lower buy-in tournaments?”
I can’t find my initial interview with Chidwick anywhere online (I thought Google knew everything). So I may be off the mark here, but I am positive, Chidwick told me during that tete-a-tete that he never deposited a single cent in an online poker account, and now here he is, with $17.5m in earnings and the mantle of Global Poker Index (GPI) #1 sewn into the collar of his school jumper.
How does that feel?
“It feels really amazing,” says Chidwick with pride. “It’s a goal I have had for a long time. It’s felt like I’ve played high rollers for a long while without getting the results that matched the effort, studying and preparation I was putting in. This year, to have run as well as I have and finally reach number one is a dream come true, and getting as many comments from my peers saying – I wouldn’t say it’s deserved to win all the tournaments that I have been winning – but to hear that your peers respect you is really nice.”
When Chidwick refers to not getting the results that matched the effort, I imagine him locked away in his study, monocle crunched in his eye socket, sipping Jasmine tea from a yellow china cup coated with the motif of a dragon, running hand calculations through some super-duper AI, only to find that despite hitting the rail harder than an orc’s sword hits the helmet of a dwarf, he has played perfect poker.
“Never perfect, far from that,” says Chidwick, modestly. “Knowing how many hours I was putting in away from the table, looking around at my competition thinking they aren’t working as hard as me. As much as friends and poker players were telling me that I was running bad, there is always that thought in the back of your head that something is missing that I don’t have. Then you win a couple of tournaments, and you realise that you get really good hands repeatedly and when you get all-in you win them all, and you have all the chips.”
I’m going to sound like my mum, now.
Once you reach the top, the only way is down.
With $4m+ in buy-ins this year, will that grow as Chidwick tries to cement his view at the top of poker’s mountain, peering down at the likes of Adrian Mateos and Justin Bonomo to pour the odd barrel of burning oil down the side as they slam their climbing picks into the earth,
Does he feel the pressure of being the best?
“It takes the pressure off more than anything,” says Chidwick. “I am reaching a time where I will play less, travel less and start a family. Getting to the number one spot by this time is important. I would be disappointed not to have made it by now because it was a major goal for me. I am chasing the longest streak at #1, but I don’t feel pressured. I am enjoying the game at the level I am at, it’s still really fun for me.”
And with that, Chidwick shakes my hand, stands up, stretches, releases a little steam from his nostrils, and gets back into the race.

I’ve had a lot of luck milling outside toilets.
Eight years ago, I met my wife outside a Maltese bog. It was the only way I could get her attention. I know what you’re thinking. I’m a sick stalker. Yup. But it worked.
And here I am again.
Outside the gents, wearing a long overcoat waiting for Andrew Robl to finish his business.
I don’t plan on asking him to marry me, but I would like to spend a few moments of his time talking about his poker education. I figure I will get five minutes tops. A game is about to start, and you know a cash game player is more likely to miss the birth of their first child.
Robl takes a pew.
White ARIA tracky top zipped just below the chin.
Preened to perfection.
The start of a very long week.
I wonder what he’ll look like by the end of it?
The last time I saw Robl was in Montenegro, where he spent the entire week competing in the type of cash games concealed by a long red drape.
“We are on the high stakes gambling tour all over the world,” he says as I remind him of our Montenegro meet-up.
I feel like a fraud here. It’s a palatial playground for the rich and famous (some more frivolous). I shouldn’t be here. I feel like the fly in the soup. But Robl belongs here. It’s in the way he kicks his heels on the way back from the toilet, like a fifth member of the Oz crew skipping merrily along the yellow brick road.
I ask him if he ever stops and looks gratefully at his surroundings?
“Sometimes. Probably not as often as I should, but I think it’s important to have gratitude,” says Robl.
I can certainly see how Robl and his kind can get so used to this way of life that everything else but the splendour seems odd.
“You can get used to anything,” says Robl. It’s nice. It’s fun. You travel all over the world; different food, cultures, surroundings, and the same gamblers wherever you go.”
The ice-breaking is over.
It’s time to get down to the business at hand.
Robl’s poker education.
I ask Robl what tools he has used to improve his game, and keep up with the Ivey’s of this world?
“The main tool that’s helped me is talking to other players and watching how they play; their strategy, their perspective and how they play hands in different situations,” says Robl. “Also, the game has changed so much over the years. You need adaptability. You can never be comfortable that your strategy is the best and you have everything figured out. The top players change every few years. Few people play at a high level for a long time.”
And yet Robl is still here.
Competing.
Crying.
Cackling.
Cryogenised beneath casino air cons.
Coughing through second-hand smoke.
So who are the people who taught Robl the more beautiful things about poker?
“I have played poker for 12-years, so there have been many,” says Robl. “When I started Tom Dwan, Phil Galfond and Peter Jetten helped a lot. Later, people like Brian Rast. More recently I have been studying on my own. I am not one of the top players anymore, so I’m not on the cutting edge, but Jason Koon has helped me a lot with the new strategies – the GTO way of playing.”
A smirk follows the letters.
G.
T.
O.
Is this because he’s more of a feel player?
“Nah, it’s the new cliched thing to say,” says a smiling Robl.
Just because you have the money to compete in an Andrew Robl cash game doesn’t make you a world class player. So, how do you spot a world class player when he or she sits down at your table?
“You can tell by how they play,” says Robl. “They are very hard to play against. It’s hard to put them on a hand, and you can’t pick up patterns as easily. They are hard to put on a narrow range of hands. They play a solid game and don’t splash around too much. The true world class players don’t give their money away; they don’t go on tilt or anything like that.”
I can feel that he’s itching to get away from me. It’s nothing personal. There is a game going on a few feet away from where we sit. The chips are burning circular shaped holes in his back. I can see Bobby Baldwin staring back at me through one of them.
It must be a good game.
But what does that even mean?
“A good game is full of gamblers, people who are there to have a good time, play a lot of hands, play fast, have a good game,” says Robl. “They are not there to maximise their hourly rate. When you play in a game where everyone is a poker robot, it’s no fun. You won’t find a lot of games like that at the highest stakes.”
We all have things that we’re improving.
Anger issues.
The Volkswagen Van in the garage.
Our GTO game.
I ask Robl to describe a weakness he’s struggled to overcome.
“Poker teaches you how to be humble,” says Robl. “If you go into the game with a big ego thinking you’re always right, you’re either going to have to adapt your mindset, or you are not going to last. You can do everything right, and things still don’t go your way. It’s a deep game. It doesn’t matter how long you play you are always learning something new. You’re never the fountain of all knowledge.”
Behind the Julius Caesar style, red drape sits the sort of people that constitute a good game. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars will exchange hands. And yet, a few feet to my right, and a different group of players have paid $12,500 to play in a tournament. Some of the cash game players will never sit in the tournament, and some of the tournament players will never venture beyond the red drape.
Why is that?
“There is a mode of entry to the highest cash games,” says Robl. “People will have to want to play with you. With a lot of the famous tournament players, maybe people are a little bit afraid of them. When I first got started, and maybe until three years ago, all the best players were cash game players. In my opinion, they were better, more sophisticated and had a deeper understanding of the game than tournament players. I think that’s changed. These high stakes tournament players, they have almost the perfect game.”
Interesting.
There was a time, not that long ago that a cash game reg would welcome a tournament reg like a Polar Bear embraces a fat juicy seal. Is Robl saying he would prefer the top tournament regs stayed away from his game?
“I always like a challenge,” says Robl. “I don’t mind playing with world-class tournament players. At the same time, I wouldn’t be particularly happy to have them at my table. I like to win, and I believe a lot of them are much better than me.”
And with that, the red drape opens, and the ‘good’ game sucks the humble Andrew Robl in.

My wife is a ‘should of’ person.
I should have had what you ordered.
I should have bought the other pair.
I should have chosen the other guy.
“I’m selling action to the $1,000,000 buy-in 1 Drop tournament at 1.05 markup. I will be donating all the money from the 5% markup to charities meeting the tenets of Effective Altruism. Contact me for 5%.”
That’s Justin Bonomo’s pinned tweet.
I should have…
In many ways, Justin Bonomo’s assault on the Big One for One Drop felt a little like England’s World Cup campaign.
Before the Big One, the two most significant buy-in events of the year have been the $300,000 buy-in Super High Roller Bowl (SHRB) in Las Vegas, and the $267,000 buy-in SHRB in China, and Justin Bonomo had won them both for a combined $9.8m.
He couldn’t win all three, could he?
Like England facing an ageing Croatian side, was this one tournament too many for the ultimate End Boss?
Let’s find out.

David Einhorn Bubbles The One Drop
27 players found $1m to compete in the most massive buy-in event ever created, raising $2,160,000 for charity.
After two days of incredible action here was the final table.

Final Table

Justin Bonomo – 48,950,000
Fedor Holz – 22,125,000
Dan Smith – 21,450,000
Rick Salomon – 19,650,000
David Einhorn – 12,300,000
Byron Kaverman – 10,525,000

$2.6m was the starting point from a charitable angle. There would be more donated, for sure. Justin Bonomo was a Raising For Effective Giving (REG) Ambassador, so you knew some of his profits had been set aside to help ease suffering in the world. Dan Smith is a known philanthropist, and Fedor Holz is also recognised to donate a bob or two.
But none of them raises money for charity with the girth of David Einhorn, the man who donated his entire $4.3m prize when finishing third in 2012.
So, it was a topsy-turvy feeling when Einhorn’s involvement ended on the bubble. Had he won the $10m, he would have saved many lives, but the poker community as a whole would have been staring at a large chunk of change missing from the fabric of its structure.
“I almost feel guilty for knocking out David Einhorn,” Bonomo told PokerNews.
I’m sure it was only a fleeting thought, Justin.
Einhorn raised to 1.1m on the button, and Bonomo called from the big blind. The dealer spread the 7c5c5h across the felt. Bonomo checked, and Einhorn bet 1.6m before Bonomo check-raised to 7.5m. It was enough to cover Einhorn, and after some deliberation, he made the call.
Bonomo: 74o
Einhorn: AQo
Bonomo had connected with a big blind special and was two cards away from guaranteeing everyone at the table a $1m profit. The 2h and Kc changed nothing. Einhorn was out.

Fedor Holz Eliminates Byron Kaverman & Rick Salomon
When you’re playing in a $1m buy-in event, the last person you want to see peering over a chip stack the size of the Burj Khalifa is Fedot Holz, and that’s the sight that befell both Bonomo and Dan Smith, after an incredible double knockout.
Byron Kaverman moved all-in for around 8 million in the first position. Holz made the call from the next DXRacer, and Rick Salomon moved all-in for 26.9m out of the big blind.
Pain.
Agony.
Anguish.
Or was he figuring shit out?
I don’t know, but Holz went into the tank, using four-time extension chips before making the call.
Holz: TcTs
Kaverman: Ac5c
Salomon: AhKh
Kaverman wanted clubs, Salomon wanted hearts, and Holz wished to close his eyes, press ‘teleport’ and open them five cards later.
The dealer faced the AdKs2c onto the flop, and the Iris’s of Salomon flexed as he realised he had flopped the top two pairs. And then we had the most incredible turn card.
Turn: Qc
Salomon remained in the lead, but now, everyone had a piece of the pie. And it was a lovely pie. The type of pie that gets stuck in your moustache, and you’re licking it all day.
Kaverman had a flush draw, and Holz added Broadway outs to his tens.
River: Td
Holz had done it again.
When it mattered, the young man from Germany, got precisely what he ordered from the Poker Gods.
A few handshakes later, and Holz was able to relax.

Three-Handed Chip Counts
Fedor Holz – 66,500,000
Justin Bonomo – 50,100,000
Dan Smith – 18,400,000
A relaxed Holz put his pedal to the metal.
Fedor Holz – 91,100,000
Dan Smith – 26,100,000
Justin Bonomo – 17,800,000
There could be only one.

Dan Smith Eliminated in 3^rd Place for $4m.
Bonomo picked up a couple of pots to pick up some slack on Holz, but you felt if the American was to win, he needed to eliminate Smith, and that’s what happened.
The action folded to Bonomo who moved all-in, and Smith made what would be the final call of his tournament.
Bonomo: KTo
Smith: QTs
The dealer laid the Ad9s6s in the middle of the Thunderdome. Not bad. Things became more interesting when the Js provided Smith with flush and straight outs, but the Qh disappointed every Smith fan in the building. The man with the ten-gallon hat was out. Bonomo would face Holz for all the marbles.

Bonomo v Holz
No two players have won more money playing live tournaments in the past three-years than Fedor Holz and Justin Bonomo. The pair are incredible in many ways, and the audience was fortunate to see two of the very best going at it for the top prize of $10m.

Chip Counts
Fedor Holz – 84,300,000
Justin Bonomo – 50,700,000
Holz began the brightest, winning a plethora of pots to extend his lead to 54m chips. But then Bonomo started buzzing, doubling through the German when his A8 turned an ace to beat the pocket fours of Holz who was two cards away from victory.
Then came the moment of the tournament for both players.
Holz opened to 2.8m, Bonomo raised to 9.5m, and Holz called. Qc4c3s flew out of the deck, and Bonomo bet 5m; Holz called. The 8h arrived on fourth-street; Bonomo checked, Holz bet 11.5m, and Bonomo called. The river card was the 6d. Bonomo tapped felt; Holz moved all-in, and Bonomo made a quick call.
You could tell by the look on Holz’s face that all was not good in that corner of the world. The German showed KJo for the middle of a doughnut, and Bonomo took a 110.4m v 24.6m chip lead after showing 84s, for eights-up.
It was time to see if Holz had the stamina, grit and luck to turn things around.
Early doors, the prognosis was excellent.
After Bonomo ground him down to ten bigs, Holz doubled with QTo versus K5o after turning a lady, and then he pulled things back to a 3:1 deficit when his J4 found a twin on the flop to beat the pocket tens of Bonomo.
Bonomo – 101,000,000
Holz – 34,000,000
And then Bonomo had a Gandalf moment; you know, the, you shall not pass bridge moment, only unlike the grey-bearded wonder, Bonomo didn’t fall into the abyss, his opponent did.
Bonomo called from the button; Holz James for 23.6m and Bonomo called.
Bonomo: AJo
Holz: A4o
Bonomo had Holz in a dominated position.
You could sense this was it.
The final hand of a fantastic tournament.
It was the perfect moment to play some Hans Zimmer.
The dealer placed K832Q on the board with minimal fuss, and Bonomo had won the trifecta of SHRB, SHRB China and the Big One for One Drop all in a single year.
And they don’t even have an accolade for it.
It’s time they made one.

Final Table Results

Justin Bonomo – $10,000,000
Fedor Holz – $6,000,000
Dan Smith – $4,000,000
Rick Salomon – $2,840,000
Byron Kaverman – $2,000,000

It was an incredible moment for Bonomo.
Not only did he had another $10m to his vault. But in doing so, he overtook Dan Colman’s record annual haul, with $24,945,435 earned with five months of the year remaining.
Most significantly, Bonomo now stands on the very top of the Live Tournament All-Time Money Earned Leaderboard, replacing longtime throne holder, Daniel Negreanu with $42,979,591 taken from poker tables around the globe.
Man, I should have…

I have Blu Tack stains on my wall.
I should sue.
I used it because its sole purpose, the only reason it exists, is so I can stick things on the wall. So I did. A butterfly, a spider sitting on his cobweb, a dragon circling a volcano mid-spew, and a snake. Mary will be over in an hour to try her best to rob me of my deposit, and here I am squeezing lemon over the oily residue as I know she will do everything in her power to rob me.
Five thousand miles away, 27 people have paid a million bucks to play poker. The contrast is as sharp as Mary’s lizard like tongue. Six remain. There is a $10m prize at stake. And one man, the same man as always, sticks to the top of the chip counts like my stubborn pieces of blue.
I can’t imagine what it would feel like to pay a million bucks, play for two days, get down to the final six players, and still be a million bucks in the hole, but that’s the situation as Day 2 of the Big One for One Drop ends in Las Vegas.
This is what they are playing for.

The Gold

$10,000,000
$6,000,000
$4,000,000
$2,800,000
$2,000,000

Here’s the tale of wonder and woe.

The Tale of Wonder and Woe
Level 11: 50,000/100,000/100,000
Brian Rast, Byron Kaverman and Rainer Kempe all believe the Day 2 50 big blind strategy is best.
The first person to bust on Day 2 was Adrian Mateos. The Spaniard got into a spat with Fedor Holz on the turn in an upraised pre-flop pot. The board showed ThTs7d3h when Mateos moved all-in and Holz called. Mateos held KT for trip tens, but Holz showed down pocket sevens for the flopped boat. Mateos was up shit creek without a boat or a paddle.
Phil Ivey moves ominously into the chip lead like an iceberg the size of Australia floating towards 20 penguins cuddled together on a sheet of ice the size of a surfboard.
Rainer Kempe had the shortest One Drop experience of anyone who took part over two days. The German star got it in pre-flop with pocket queens, only for David Einhorn to turn over the rockets. Kempe didn’t last a level.
Non-professional poker players were as rare as homeless guys without a dog, and we lost one in the first level in the shape of Meditor Capital Management Founder, Talal Shakerchi. Once again it was Holz taking the role of playground bully when his AK found an ace on the turn, to beat Shakerchi’s pocket nines in a race to the death after a pre-flop all-in encounter.
Jason Koon doubled through Stephen Chidwick, KK>JJ on a Td4c3d flop, and the Global Poker Index (GPI) #1 put the last of his change in the middle against Matthew Siegal only for pocket aces to swallow pocket sixes like Jonah and the whale.

Level 12: 60,000/120,000/120,000
No eliminations, but Mikita Badziakouski found himself short before doubling through Nick Petrangelo K6o>AJs after flopping a six.

Level 13: 80,000/160,000/160,000
Despite that double up, the Belarusian was the first player of Level 13 to leave his DXRacer chair after running AJs, into the pocket kings of Rick Salomon.
The next to person to go bump in the night was the former Super High Roller Bowl (SHRB) Champion, Brian Last. Last got it in with AK versus the QQ of Petrangelo and the Q77 flop looked like a nuclear warhead. The 6s on the turn drawing a line under Rast’s participation in the event.
Then we lost the 2014 runner-up.
The action folded to Daniel Negreanu in the small blind. The Canadian moved all-in, holding T7s, and Steffen Sontheimer called from the big blind holding A6o. The board offered no solace to Kid Poker who was still steaming after missing the first hand after the break due to a communication issue.
We were down to the final two tables, and Fedor Holz held the chip lead with Rick Salomon, David Einhorn, Erik Seidel and Nick Petrangelo pressing.
David Einhorn takes the lead after winning a decent chunk from Phil Ivey, and then Koon takes those Ivey chips by doubling through the philanthropist JJ>AK.
Koon tried the same trick with Justin Bonomo a few hands later resulting in the opposite effect. Koon moved all-in holding pocket tens, Bonomo called with queens, and the man wearing the Never Die cap, died.
Then we lost the 2017 Poker Masters Champion.
Sontheimer opened from the button, Dan Smith moved all-in from the small blind, and the man with the purple jacket made the call against the man wearing a blue one. It was AQ for Sontheimer, pocket sevens for Smith, and the pair held.

Level 14: 100,000/200,000/200,000
The first man to leave the contest in Level 14 was Matthew Siegal. It was a three-bet pot, with Siegel the aggressor, and Justin Bonomo playing ball. The flop came down QdTh3h and Siegal moved all-in. Bonomo made the call holding KJs for the open-ended straight draw, and Siegal held AKo for the Broadway straight draw, and ace high. The turn was the ace, giving Bonomo his straight, and Siegal was out. Bonomo was the new chip leader.
Bonomo was like a bloodsucking leech by this point, the next person to be drained of life was Dominik Nitsche. The pair got it in with the German holding AQ, and Bonomo showing the dominating AK, and five cards later the SHRB Champ moved over the 30 million chip mark.
From one SHRB Champ to another and Christoph Vogelsang found a fortunate double up against his compatriot Fedor Holz. Vogelsang’s K3s finding a three on the flop when all-in against AK.
Then Ivey doubled through Bonomo.
In an upraised pre-flop pot, Bonomo put Ivey all-in on the turn with the board showing 7d3d3hQc, and the legend called with AA. Bonomo showed AQ for a less significant two pairs.

Level 15: 120,000/240,000/240,000
Ivey’s topsy-turvy period continued when he lost a race against Einhorn TT<AK to double up the savvy businessman. And then Erik Seidel eliminated Vogelsang in a cooler.
Seidel made it 550k from the cutoff, and the German defended the big blind. The flop was Js4d3c, Seidel bet 1.5m, Vogelsang shoved for around a million more and the New Yorker made the call. Vogelsang showed J4o for top two pair, and Seidel turned over pocket fives. The ace on the turn opened up wheel possibilities for Seidel, and the 2d on the river turned those possibilities into a hard fact which Siedel used to bludgeon Vogelsang over the head with until he was no more.
Then we lost the Poker Central creator.
Cary Katz moved all-in holding A6o from late position, and Dan Smith mad the call from the big blind holding 87o, and flopped a seven to send Katz to the rail.
We had our unofficial final table.
Here were the chip counts.

Justin Bonomo – 25,400,000
Nick Petrangelo – 18,880,000
Erik Seidel – 15,980,000
Fedor Holz – 15,455,000
Rick Salomon – 14,425,000
Dan Smith – 14,085,000
David Einhorn – 12,930,000
Byron Kaverman – 12,135,000
Phil Ivey – 5,710,000

The last action of the level saw Einhorn find another double up, this time AA versus the K5o of Bonomo.

Level 16: 150,000/300,000/300,000

Byron Kaverman doubled through Seidel, AK>QQ, after a turn landed on the turn. And then the Poker Gods handed Seidel a cooler when he got it in holding the nuts on Td9h8d (Quo), facing off against the flush draw of Einhorn (Q9dd), and the 4d landed on the river to send the experienced Seidel to the rail.
The final seven players were happy to see the back of Phil Ivey. The one time greatest player in the world got it in holding AJ, but Bonomo woke up with kings, and Ivey was out in eighth place.

Level 17: 200,000/400,000/400,000
No action to speak of.

Level 18: 250,000/500,000/500,000
Seeking an unprecedented third final table, Salomon doubled through Smith when his ATo beat the KQo of his ten gallon hat wearing opponent, and then we had our final table, when Bonomo eliminated Petrangelo 99>A8o.

Final Table

Justin Bonomo – 48,950,000
Fedor Holz – 22,125,000
Dan Smith – 21,450,000
Rick Salomon – 19,650,000
David Einhorn – 12,300,000
Byron Kaverman – 10,525,000

I could be 20-miles away, stealing apples, and I would hear my mother calling me from our doorstep.
There were no mobile phones.
The spectre of Peter Sutcliffe still hung in the Northern air, and although he didn’t kill children, you would have thought we would have been closer to the bosom.
Nope.
Off we went, gallivanting around town playing kiss-chase, spin the bottle, and stealing fruit from an angry man’s backyard.
One place I loved was the library. I fell in love with Asterisk and Obelisk, and later Herge’s Adventures of Tintin. Then one day, I found a book called Deathtrap Dungeon by Ian Livingstone.
It was one of the earliest choose your own adventure books. Become a wizard, dwarf or elf; roll dice to determine your magical powers, and then battle with all manner of mythical creatures with the aim of ending as the hero.
I went through the lot – The Citadel of Chaos, The Forest of Doom and The Firetop Mountain Series.
Mundane life had me on a leash, and I was tugging like a maniac. I was desperate to avoid the clocking in and out life. I wanted to be a millionaire like Del Boy. I wanted any experience, other than the one I was stuck inside.
I wonder if Ben Yu believes he is the hero of his choose your own adventure. Yu is not a name usually associated with the high roller community, but all that may change after what has been a quite stunning World Series of Poker (WSOP).
Yu plays Magic The Gathering competitively, so I am sure had he been as old as me, he too would have found the allure of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone to compelling to ignore.
And here he is, creating a page-turner.
And a few pages ago, Yu was faced with this question:
“Should I play in the $50,000 No-Limit Hold’em High Roller? If you decide to turn the opportunity down, turn to page 68. If you invest your well-earned gold, then turn to page 69.”
The young wizard turned to Page 69.
Let’s see what happened next?

The Young Wizard Takes on the Bad Asses of the High Roller NLHE Scene
When Yu sat down to play in the highest stakes No-Limit Hold’em competition of his career, the poker universe’s top Warlocks, Elves and the occasional greedy Dwarf surrounded him.
128 of them, to be precise.
The narrative allowed for 14 levels.
31 players survived.
Ten of them owned at least one gold bracelet.
The Austrian pro, Matthias Eibinger, led the way with 2,120,000 chips. Jake Schindler joined him above the two million mark.
The $100k High Roller winner Nick Petrangelo finished with 1,500,000. Elio Fox, the man who finished runner-up to Petrangelo in that event, bagged up 1,875,000. The man who dominated the recent Triton Poker Series in Montenegro, Jason Koon, ended with 1,450,000 chips, and Yu managed to stuff 1,500,000 into a clear plastic bag.

Top Ten Chip Counts

Matthias Eibinger – 2,120,000
Jake Schindler – 2,050,000
Isaac Haxton – 1,955,000
Elio Fox – 1,875,000
Daniel Merrilees – 1,865,000
Juan Pardo Dominguez – 1,650,000
Stefan Schillhabel – 1,570,000
Nick Petrangelo – 1,500,000
Ben Yu – 1,500,000
Jason Koon – 1,450,000

Day 2: Winter’s Coming; Yu Meets it Head-On
With blinds at 20k/40k, the action fell to Ben Yu in the small blind. He looked across at the dangerous, but short-stacked, Nick Petrangelo in the big blind, before moving all-in holding J2o. Petrangelo looked down at 88, called, and doubled to 2m. Yu stumbled to 1.6m.
One level later, and an important moment for Yu.
John Andress moved all-in from midfield, Daniel Merrilees moved all-in from late position, and Yu, who had both beasts covered, made the call from the big blind.
Yu: KK
Merrilees: AQ
Andress: 55
Andress flopped a gut-shot, but Yu faded any potential turn or river booby trap to move up to 2,950,000.
With blinds at 30k/60k, Yu cast a spell on the in-form Chris Hunichen to send him to the rail drawing three streets of value on QT468 holding KQ with Big Huni holding AT. Yu moved up to 5.5m, good enough for the chip lead.
It’s always nice to peer down and see the rockets, and that’s what happened with blinds at 40k/80k. Yu had them. The former champion Ryan Riess had pocket eights, and the pair went for it. Yu rivered the third ace for good measure and moved up to 6.2m; Riess’s tournament was left in pieces.
Yu’s next victim was Jason Koon.
Yu put Koon all-in on a board of 6d6h7d3dKd after rivering a flush holding Qd9h, and Koon reluctantly called with As6c for a flopped set of sixes. And then we had the final table after Yu eliminated Ben Pollak in a blind on blind battle holding J5o v 88. Another flush hit on the river to hand Yu another scalp. The Poker Gods were treating Yu like Zeus and co once treated Perseus.

Final Table

Ben Yu – 7,700,000
Nick Petrangelo – 5,100,000
Manig Loeser – 3,650,000
Igor Kurganov – 3,400,000
Jake Schindler – 3,400,000
Elio Fox – 3,025,000
Sean Winter – 2,850,000
John Racener – 2,340,000
Isaac Haxton – 1,200,000

Elio Fox was the first player to hit the rail when his pocket sixes bumped into the electrified fence of Sean Winter’s pocket jacks. Jake Schindler followed Fox to the door marked ‘exit’ when his A5o failed to beat the lowly looking 43c after Haxton flopped a pair.
And Haxton hadn’t finished swinging his fists.
The next player to feel his wrath was John Racener after he moved all-in holding KJo, and Haxton called with A3s, and once again turned a killer trey. We were down to six.
If there were a High Roller Breakout Award, it would surely go to Manig Loeser, and the German had another phenomenal run finishing sixth after his AK failed to beat the pocket treys of Winter in another sprint to the finishing line.
Winter then emerged as Yu’s primary threat when he eliminated Igor Kurganov. It was another race, this time pocket sixes dodging every ace and queen in the deck to send the Raising For Effective Giving (REG) founder to the rail.
Nick Petrangelo came into a league of his own, winning pot after pot to create a substantial chip lead. The $100k champ was running away with it, and then Yu eliminated Haxton AQ>A7 to bring him neck and neck with Petrangelo, with Winter looking up at them from the bottom of the cliff face,
Petrangelo – 13,100,000
Yu – 12,100,000
Winter – 6,900,000
Winter doubled through Petrangelo A5>T7s before putting in a string of consecutive winning hands to take a substantial lead. Yu slowed him down, doubling-up 99>A8, and then made the chip lead going into heads-up after sending Petrangelo home in third 44>ATo.
Heads-Up: Short and Sweet
Yu – 18,275,000
Winter – 13,725,000
And to the final battle.`
Yu v Winter.
Inexperienced high stakes No-Limit Hold’em combatant versus one of the most experienced.
Yu didn’t want this to turn into a battle.
It didn’t.
It was all over before you could type YU.
Winter limped into the pot from the small blind holding A9o. Yu moved all-in holding KQo; Winter called. The J73r flop was clean for Winter, but the Kh on the turn put Yu one card away from victory. The 6d finished the action and Yu was the only wizard left with chips.
So what would Yu’s next choose your own adventure be?
The One Drop?
“I think that’s too much for me,” Yu told PokerNews after his win. “I don’t think I’m one of the top 10 or maybe even 20 players in this hundred person field.”
It seems Yu also has a high humility score.
Yu first registered a live tournament ITM finish back in 2008 when he placed 69^th in a $1,500 Limit Hold’em Shootout at the WSOP. It wasn’t until 2014 that Yu began competing in the $10k Championship events with increasing regularity, but 2018 has been a breakout year for the rising star.
In January, Yu finished 10/75 in the $25,500 No-Limit Hold’em High Roller at the World Poker Tour (WPT) Lucky Hearts Poker Open for $56,250. Then, during the WSOP, Yu finished runner-up to Shaun Deeb in the $25,000 Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller for $866,924 – a career high until his $50,000 performance.
Yu has won $5,250,029 playing live tournaments, with close to $3m of that bounty earned this year.
He has cashed 15 times at the WSOP, made four final tables, won a bracelet, and has earned more than $2.8m, thrusting him into the business end of the WSOP Player of the Year race, where he is on the trail of his old nemesis, Shaun Deeb.
Here is that up to date leaderboard.

Shaun Deeb – 4,386,84
Ben Yu – 3,746.04
John Hennigan – 3,552.69
Scott Bohlman – 3,155.88
Paul Volpe – 2,859.76

After Michael ‘The Grinder’ Mizrachi won an unprecedented third Poker Player’s Championship (PPC) back in June, the man who finished third in 2015, David Baker, sent his annual tweet to the World Series of Poker (WSOP) giving them advice on how to spruce up the event after only 87 people produced $50,000 worth of goods.

I’ve made this suggestion almost every yr. if @WSOP wants to make 50k PPC as special as it should be. Special start time, blocked off sections, food brought in, some incentive to start on time with a nice kickoff.

— David Baker (@audavidb) June 15, 2018

“I’ve made this suggestion almost every year. If @WSOP wants to make 50k PPC as special as it should be. Special start time, blocked off sections, food brought in, some incentive to start on time with a nice kickoff.” Tweeted Baker.

Following up on Baker’s tweet, PocketFives’ Lance Bradley, penned a piece on his home platform titled: 5 THINGS: The Poker Players Championship Deserves More Celebration, suggesting five actions the WSOP could take, to diminish the annual moan and groan from Baker.
Here is the article – https://www.pocketfives.com/articles/5-things-the-poker-players-championship-deserves-more-celebration-619630/
If you can’t be bothered reading it, here are the bullet points.

Use the PPC Champs as part of the Main Event Opening Ceremony.
Make the event more viewable for live attendees.
Change the table felt.
Improve the live streaming.
Find a sponsor.

While these improvements could make the participants feel ‘special’ I doubt any of them will contribute to a significant increase in numbers.
High Rollers like to feel special, that’s a given. However, what makes any $25k+ event a ‘must play’game, is the addition of players whom the elite feel they have the edge over.
Before the WSOP bows down to Bradley and starts pimping up the PPC, may I suggest they figure out how to attract weaker players who are likely to flick in $50,000 in the same nonchalant way a pro approaches THE COLOSSUS.
And It’s Not Easy
Since the most iconic poker brand in the world cut a deal to partner with Leon Tsoukernik to host World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) and World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) events at his gaff back in Rozvadov, the job of hosting high stakes tournaments seems to have fallen to the Czech entrepreneur.
Before a single card hit the muck in anger at this year’s festival, the WSOP released an ambitious schedule to host $25k and $50k High Roller events (Both NLHE & PLO) in the Rio-based King’s Lounge.
The events were supposed to run each weekend from June 1 to July 8, and unless I am mistaken, not a single one has taken place.
Why?
I reached out to a well-known figure in the high stakes community, who prefers to remain anonymous, who told me that none of the games have run because there are no recreational players.

“There is no incentive for the pros to start them. The rake is absurdly high, and they can’t run without Leon. He either needs to play or bring his friends, or they don’t run.” Said my source.
And it’s not only the King’s Lounge that has had difficulty finding people to take a seat in a big live tournament this summer. The ARIA has also suffered.
Here are the results for the most recent ARIA High Rollers:
Monday 11 June – $25k NLHE
30 entrants

Adrian Mateos – $253,240
Ben Tollerene – $241,760
Cary Katz – $120,000
Rainer Kempe – $75,000
David Peters – $60,000

Tuesday 12 June – $25k NLHE
18 entrants

Nick Petrangelo – $243,000
Byron Kaverman – $135,000
Rainer Kempe – $72,000

Thursday 14 June – $25k 8-Game High Roller
30 entrants

Philip Sternheimer – $275,000
Elior Sion – $220,000
Isaac Haxton – $120,000
Alexander Kostritsyn – $75,000
Luke Schwartz – $60,000

Monday 18 June – $25k NLHE
23 entrants

Ben Tollerene – $264,500
Sergio Aido – $161,000
Cary Katz $92,000
Igor Kurganov – $57,500

Sunday 24 June – $25k NLHE
14 entrants

Nick Petrangelo – $245,000
Cary Katz – $105,000

Two wins for Petrangelo and three ITM finishes from Katz the standout stories in what is otherwise a damp squid of a narrative.
Catz’ success moves him on par with Jake Schindler as the most prolific ITM finisher in ARIA High Roller event history.
Here are the top five.

Jake Schindler – 41
Cary Katz – 41
Tom Marchese – 27
David Peters – 24
Sam Soverel – 19
Bryn Kenney – 19

The Answer?
I agree with both Baker and Bradley that the $50k PPC is a special event.
If the WSOP want to increase the numbers, as well as the prestige and specialness, then they need to leverage their relationship with Tsoukernik or network with other people within the poker community that have the clout to pull in a handful of wealthy amateurs.
If this happened, and word spread, then you would see more people priming the pump ready to compete in the $50,000 PPC, and who knows, this could also include strict NLHE players willing to learn Mixed Games because the value in the PPC is so good.

Sometimes the most illuminating conversations arise from the pit of the most unusual stomachs.
In Montenegro for the Triton Poker Series finding poker players to open up was like manhandling a trout. One person who kept slipping out of my grasp was Deitrich Fast.
“I don’t speak good English,” said Fast.
It sounded good enough to me.
Finally, after much persuasion, we sat down and began talking. Immediately, I knew, Fast was my type of guy. A filterless man. A confident man. Someone willing to share his thoughts on anything and everything.
The discussion turned towards the atmosphere at high stakes tournaments, and how it felt like a lovefest. Fast put me straight. Not everyone was in love.
“Steve O’Dwyer and I aren’t friends at all.” Fast told me before continuing, “His ego is so big, and if you see his game, it’s just awful. He still makes money, he proves it, but I just keep telling him that his game is really bad.”
Steve O’Dwyer has won more than $23m playing live tournaments. Only ten people in the history of the game have won more. Is it possible that O’Dwyer is that bad at the game, and his results are merely the effects of one part of poker’s yin and yang?
Is O’Dwyer a lucky player?
Name a high stakes poker player who isn’t lucky?
Nope, this issue transcends ‘luck’.
I think O’Dwyer is Wabi-Sabi.

Poker And Lean Principles
I waited for him to pour me a cup of tea. I leafed through the bookshelf, coughing each time a speck of dust climbed into my throat and began tickling my epiglottis.
I picked one out.
The Machine That Changed The World by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones and Daniel Roos.

“What’s this?”
“That’s the book that will get you running your trains on time.”
It was 2008; the world was going through an economic crisis. I was responsible for all Port Talbot Steelworks rail exports. The man telling me that this book would help me run trains on time had called me to his office to tell me he had no steel for me to move.
The book was a mini-history of car manufacturing that focused on the rise in quality, and revenue, of Toyota. The authors defined the philosophy that undermined the Toyota Way as Lean Manufacturing. It was the process of identifying value and waste in the supply chain, removing as many forms as waste as possible to speed up throughput without affecting quality.
It fascinated me.
After I finished the book, not only was I confident that I could run trains on time, but I could use Lean Principles to improve my life. Within the next two-years, I quit my 19-year career in the rail industry and set about becoming a professional poker player to give me the freedom of time and money so I could create a company that would help people quit alcohol.
I had one goal.
To keep seeking perfection.
To eliminate all forms of waste, and to remove defects from my life.

Vorsprung Der Technik

South Korea defeated Germany today for the first time in the team’s FIFA World Cup history. Watch all the highlights from today’s match and create your own in the Highlight Machine. https://t.co/9dri0RitbT

— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) June 28, 2018

When South Korea dumped Germany out of the World Cup, the first time this great footballing nation had failed to reach the knockout stages since 1938, world football celebrated.
There is something very ‘perfect’ about anything that Germany does, epitomised by their national football team. As an Englishman, Germany has broken my heart twice. During the 1990 World Cup in Italy, and Euro 96 on home soil. Both times, England were the better team, but the Germans had created a way to win that seemed flawless.
You can’t put your finger on it.
It just is.
If you were to single out a group of poker players who are killing the high stakes poker scene, it would be the Germans, of which Dietrich Fast is a valuable member.
This tribe is so vast there is one Skype group containing more than 35 German players, either competing in the high stakes tranche, or with the capability of one day joining those impressive ranks, and the one thing connecting them all is this singular pursuit of poker perfection.
GTO.
Game Theory Optimal.
The perfect way to play poker.

Define Perfect
How do you define perfect?
I can’t answer that in a way that would satisfy poker purists. But consider this. In 2017, Libratus, a poker-playing artificial intelligence (AI), created by the geniuses in white lab coats out of Carnegie Mellon University, beat some of the world’s top players in Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em.
During the ensuing interviews with the world’s best players, it became apparent that Libratus beat them by playing in a way that was deemed ‘unusual’ to the top pros. If a smattering of the best players in the world believed there was a GTO way of playing poker, Libratus had them doubting.
There are many ways to define ‘perfect’.
The marketing genius, Seth Godin, has a podcast called Akimbo, and during one of his episodes, he talked about the myriad of ways you can define perfection and one of these involved ‘meeting spec’.
Godin mentioned that 150-years ago, you would have been hard-pressed to find a nut that matched a bolt. The tolerances were too broad. Until recently, it made sense for manufacturers to create vast amounts of parts on the cheap, to keep that tolerance wide, in the belief that it was more efficient.
A man named Edward Deming had a different point of view.
Deming believed it was more prudent to narrow the tolerance as he thought this was a better way to raise standards of excellence. He took his idea to Ford. They laughed him off the plant. Deming jumped on a jet plane and headed to Japan to see if he could influence the car manufacturing industry in the East. At the same time, a young man named Taiich Ohno was having similar thoughts at a car plant called Toyota.
Lean Principles was born.
Back to my conversation with Fast, and he defined the German philosophy as coming from the ‘fundamental side’ of the game. He didn’t use the words ‘GTO’ or ‘perfection’, but I am sure this is the way the Germans approach the game. I remember asking Dominik Nitsche who was the best player in the world.
“Libratus.”
The Germans are like Toyota, developing Lean Principles to identify wasteful plays or activities and to eliminate them to provide more value. They are continually raising standards and making tolerance more specific.
Back in the days of Henry Ford, there must have been boxes and boxes of parts. Taiichi Ohno and Deming reduced this to a small number. They placed the factory floor worker in charge of the line. Each time there was a discrepancy, the line stopped, and another wasteful activity changed through meetings known as kaizen.
The Germans do the same.
They have done their homework, often using AI to define the perfect play given each situation. Through experience, they can choose the best move in minutes. They continue to refine this process, by holding kaizen style discussions via Skype and in person.
They are the ultimate poker machines when it comes to eliminating waste and delivering value. They have a few critical plays in limited boxes, and this allows them to make quicker decisions than the people dithering over every decision because they have too many boxes to find the right part.
They are as close to poker perfection as you can get.
But they’re not winning all of the money.
Steve O’Dwyer has $23m of it.

The Wabi-Sabi of Poker
Moments before writing this article, I read a series of poems from Charles Bukowski on my Kindle. Bukowski is one of my favourite authors. Like Fast, there is no filter making him my kind of man.
As a writer, I don’t come from the belly of the purist. I make mistakes. I don’t know the difference between a noun and a pronoun. I don’t know where to stick the perfect comma. But I know how to tell a story. Bukowski was the same. He was imperfectly perfect.
Leonard Koren once wrote a book called Wabi Sabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers. Like Lean Principles the term Wabi-Sabi also comes from Japan. It’s an ambiguous term to translate, but it goes something like this:
Wabi – nature, breath, loneliness.
Sabi – rust, sadness, withered.
In more recent times, Arielle Ford wrote a book called Wabi Sabi Love: The Ancient Art of Finding Perfect Love in Imperfect Relationships.
I think both Koren and Ford define Wabi-Sabi through these two quotes:
“Beauty can be coaxed out of ugliness.” Leonard Koren – Wabi-Sabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers.

“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” – Arielle Ford Wabi Sabi Love: The Ancient Art of Finding Perfect Love in Imperfect Relationships.
I read my Bukowski poems on the Kindle, a machine that perfectly delivers a book within seconds of me ordering it. It’s the by-product of Lean Principles adopted by the service world.
But every book looks the same.
Boring.
Clinical.
Last year, the data crunchers at Neilsen showed ebook sales in the UK had declined by 4%, while at the same time, bookstore sales had increased by 7%.
A book?
But it’s flimsy, easily marked and damaged, and inconvenient to cart around your person.
It seems sometimes; human beings don’t want to be the perfect cog in the high-quality system thrust upon us through 5,000 ads per day.
And it’s not just our books.
The iPod gave us 1,000 songs in our pocket, and yet vinyl sales are on the rise.
Can you get anymore imperfect than an analogue vinyl record; its needle picking up dead skin, as it hops, skips and jumps across the bend in the grooves.
It seems some parts of the human race believe Lean Principles have gotten out of hand. Maybe we have had enough of quality. Perhaps we don’t want to fit in.
Steve O’Dwyer doesn’t want to meet spec ‘perfectly.’ He doesn’t want to be part of someone else’s API. He is never going to be a cog in an ever perfecting machine.
O’Dwyer brings Wabi-Sabi to the table. The American will be the first to admit that the way he plays poker has its flaws, that he doesn’t spend hours upon hours playing with computer models looking for the perfect way to play a hand.
O’Dwyer doesn’t promise anyone that what he does will be better than you. Instead, he promises to bring Wabi-Sabi rust and imperfectness. A promise that whatever play he makes, it will be unique.
In a race for ever more gilded status, it’s refreshing to see a proponent of Wabi-Sabi poker sparring with the perfect poker purists. It’s what makes poker so beautiful. It’s what makes poker so broadly accessible.
Poker is imperfect.
Imperfection is a form of freedom.
And isn’t that what every professional poker player desires?

We can frame poker’s pride and hang it on the wall.
The bitch is back.
The propeller is whirring noisily.
It’s time to take off.
The 49^th Annual World Series of Poker (WSOP) has been a spectacular success. Hoards of people have managed to evade sexist mobile phone sellers on their way to millions of dollars in prize money, and more bad beats than The Handmaids Tale.
And it’s not ended yet.
For the first time in history, the organisers moved the $10,000 WSOP Main Event forward. It’s a sound move that gives those who fall out of that competition a reason to live and provides the $1m Big One for One Drop with the Rolling Stones like presence it deserves.
And it was a humdinger.
7,874 entrants created a prize pool of $74,015,600, making it the second-largest WSOP Main Event in history behind the incredible Internet-driven Jamie Gold win in 2006.
The winner will pick up $8.8m.
Each final table member earns $1m minimum.
But we have a long way to go before we can talk about a winner.
Until then, I want to get you up to speed on bracelet wins for three men who each have a role to play in our high stakes economy.
We will begin with a legend of the online high stakes world, and a man often touted as the next Daniel Negreanu, when it comes to the perfect ambassador for poker.

Phil Galfond Wins Event #60: $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo Championship.
Phil Galfond won his third career bracelet after beating 237 players in a format of poker he has never played online, and has only played during mixed game action in the live realm.
Speaking to PokerNews after his win, Galfond said, “I was figuring it out as I went.”
A man who has earned close to $11m playing cards at the highest stakes in the business is apt to do that.
Galfond rose to prominence in the game as one of the most fearsome competitors in online cash games earning a $6.6m profit playing cash games under the handle OMGClayAiken on Full Tilt. He is also up $1.4m profit competing as MrSweets28 on PokerStars.
Not only is Galfond one of the best high stakes online poker players in the world, but he is also one of the most excellent coaches. After building an impressive reputation on BlueFirePoker, Galfond created RunItOnce (RIO), an online training site providing top quality coaching for the best players in the world. He is also in the midst of creating RIO Poker, an online poker room, due for release this summer.
You won’t see Galfond playing many live tournaments, preferring to compete in the more lucrative cash games. He has only cashed in three events that carry a buy-in of $25k+ or more.
Back in 2008, he finished 70/545 in the $25,500 buy-in World Poker Tour (WPT) Championship banking $39,570. In 2011, he got his money back in the $25,000 buy-in NBC National Heads-Up Championship with a min-cash. In 2013, he finished runner-up to Steve Sung in the $25,000 High Roller at the WSOP for $744,841, in what remains his most significant live score to date.
He has won three career titles, and all of them ended up with a bracelet. In 2008, he defeated 152 entrants to win the $5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha for $817,781. Galfond’s second piece of gold came in 2015 when he beat 77 entrants in the $10,000 2-7 Draw Lowball No-Limit Championship for $224,383.
He has won $2.9m playing live.

Final Table Results

Phil Galfond – $567,788
Michael McKenna – $350,922
Ali Abduljabbar – $240,497
Chad Power – $168,275
Chris Lee – $120,263
Marco Johnson – $87,830
David “ODB” Baker – $65,579
Chase Steely – $50,086

Chance Kornuth Wins Event #63: $3,200 WSOP.com Online No-Limit Hold’em High Roller.
Things will get very interesting indeed when more states allow fully regulated and licensed online poker. This year, the WSOP hosted a record four online events, with the High Roller buy-in set at $3,200.
How long before that’s $10,000?
$25,000?
$50,000?
$1m?
It will come.
In the meantime, a legitimate High Roller won the second iteration of the $3,200 Online High Roller.
Chance Kornuth defeated a 480 entrants (356 unique and 124 rebuys) field, 56 more entrants than this time last year when the former November Niner Thomas Cannuli took the title.
It was Kornuth’s sixth cash of the series, and to date, he has cashed in six events carrying a $25k+ buy-in
In 2016, he defeated 122 entrants to take the AUD 790,560 (USD 547,874) first prize by winning the AUD 25,000 (USD 19,000) Challenge at the Aussie Millions.
The following month, Kornuth finished runner-up to Mustapha Kanit in the 58 entrant field €25,750 European Poker Tour (EPT) Main Event in Dublin earning €360,150.
In July of that year, he finished eighth in a 63 entrant $25,000 buy-in ARIA High Roller for $60,480. In October 2016, he won a 19-entrant $25,000 High Roller at the World Poker Tour (WPT) best bet Bounty Scramble for $186,672.
There was only one score in 2017 as Kornuth finished seventh in a 117 entrant $25,500 High Roller at the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open (SHRPO) for $93,600.
His latest HR score came in the CAD 25,500 (USD 19,000) buy-in High Roller at the partypoker MILLIONS North America Festival earning CAD 125,000 (USD 97,863).
Kornuth’s lifetime earnings exceed $5.9m.
His most significant score to date is $641,140 for finishing third in the 2015 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) Main Event.
He has won two WSOP bracelets, his first coming in 2010 when he beat 460 entrants to take down a $5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO) event for $508,090.

Final Table Results

Chance ‘BingShui’ Kornuth – $341,598
David ‘bewater’ Goodman – $212,021
Timothy ‘poker.’ Nuter – $144,168
Noah ‘ ThePunter’ Bronstein – $99,809
Frank ‘flcrivello’ Crivello – $70,625
Taylor ‘ReadyGambo’ Black – $50,926
Justin ‘kingfortune’ Liberto – $37,355
Jonas ‘LobyPewis’ Mackoff – $28,016
Pete ‘petechen’ Chen – $21,596

Jean-Robert Bellande Wins Event #58: $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em Six-Handed
Jean-Robert Bellande is an integral part of the High Stakes live cash game scene. I like to think of him as a ‘gateway drug’ for the biggest games in the world – a bridge from mid to high stakes cash game action.
Talking to him in Montenegro, during the Triton Poker Festival, where he was organising and competing in high stakes live cash games, Bellande spoke humbly of his abilities, particularly in No-Limit Hold’em.
Bellande is a mixed game man.
So it was a shock to him and me both when he beat 621 players in a highly competitive $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em to win the first bracelet of his career, all the while sipping on a $400 bottle of plonk.
It was a sweet moment for one of the most loved men in the game. In 2008, he finished runner-up to Matt Graham in a $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Shootout for $173,564. In June 2015, he finished runner-up to Mike Gorodinsky in the $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship for $784,828, his most significant score to date.
He finished 12/87 in this year’s $50k for $88,627.

Final Table Results

Jean-Robert Bellande – $616,302
Dean Lyall – $380,595
Andrew Graham – $254,684
Tan Nguyen – $173,598
Eric Blair – $120,669
Kacper Pyzara – $85,570

The next big WSOP High Roller is the $50,000 No-Limit Hold’em schedule for July 13^th. The WSOP experience ends with the $1m buy-in Big One for One Drop on July 15^th.

A woman is standing by the rail. Six feet plus. Stilettos taller than you and I. The type of heel you dream of in those dreams you never reveal to anyone or else face the look that someone gives when they flush the chain when cleaning the toilet and a piece of shit hits the once stiff upper lip.
She has been there for hours, like one of those people who spray paint themselves gold or silver and stand in the middle of the town centre frightening the shit out of kids.
I want to offer her a chair, but I know some burly bruiser will come along and tell her it’s a fire hazard.
Ludicrous.
Her heels are a fire hazard.
I want to send her to Doug Polk’s lab so he can teach her to play poker instead of watching it. Christ, she can’t see anything. I keep my eye out for her man. I want to match him to her in my mind; in those dreams.
Maybe we could train her to win the Poker Masters?
Would the organisers be like, “Shit! Someone get on the phone to Vivienne, we need a dress as purple as a bell end, and we need it right facking now!”
I blame Vanessa Selbst.
Once my favourite player quit the game, all the poker rooms have been taking liberties.
A purple jacket.
It’s not very #MeToo is it?
Ah well, I harp on.
Poker Central and ARIA Resort & Casino have announced that between Sep 6 – 13 the PokerGO Studios will be the home of the second edition of The Poker Masters.
In the first one, players were invited to compete in four $50,000 buy-in events, and a $100,000 Championship event of sorts. The player accruing the most money during those events was deemed the Poker Masters Champ and given a Purple Jacket.
That Purple Jacket is in the closet of Steffen Sontheimer after the German high stakes ace earned $2,733,000 a little something like this.
Event #1: $50,000 NLHE, finished 4/51 earning $204,000
Event #2: $50,000 NLHE, beats 50 entrants to earn $900,000
Event #4: $50,000 NLHE finished 5/39 earning $117,000
Event #5: $100,000 NLHE beats 36 entrants earning $1,512,000
Daniel Negreanu would later refer to Sontheimer as the best NLHE player in the world. The Poker Masters organisers didn’t think so. They refused to admit Sontheimer into the 2018 Super High Roller Bowl (SHRB). Only when Andrew Robl bailed out at the last minute did Sontheimer get a seat.
It’s a German thing.
Wait.
Yeah.
It was definitely a German thing.
The New Set Up
There are a few changes to note the second time around.
There are seven events, not five, and the buy-in has come down across the board, only for the organisers to equalise things by making all games bar the $50,000 buy-in a double re-entry.
Here is the lineup.
Sep 6: Event #1: $10,000 NLHE (two-days)
Sep 7: Event #2: $25,000 NLHE (two days)
Sep 8: Event #3: $25,000 NLHE (two days)
Sep 10: Event #4: $25,000 PLO (two days)
Sep 11: Event #5: $25,000 NLHE (two days)
Sep 12: Event #6: $25,000 NLHE (two days)
Sep13: Event #7: $50,000 NLHE (three days)
Did you spot the PLO event?
Players competing in the Poker Masters can earn points towards the ARIA High Roller Player of the Year, and as a part of the triumvirate that makes up the High Roller Triple Crown (alongside the US Poker Open & Super High Roller Bowl) the point values increase.
There will be a 30-second shot clock, and five 30-second time banks, daily.
Players who register before 2 pm (PDT) get the benefits of a rake-free event.
All the action from the featured and final tables is streamed live (with a short delay) on PokerGO with the NBC Sports Network broadcasting original content some months after the event ends.
And all women over six feet tall will be barred from standing on the rail.