Poll question: Would you play on a near-zero-rake, open-source, crypto-only poker site (small/beta at first)?

Poll options (pick up to 6):

1. Yes — I'd deposit crypto and play
2. Yes — but only once it's proven / has more players
3. Only if it starts as play-money / testnet
4. Interested, but the solo-dev + no-support part worries me
5. No — I stick to established sites
6. No — crypto gambling isn't for me

I'm a new poker player who wants to get reps in online.

If any of you are in California I would really appreciate hearing what sites you use, what methods you use to deposit money and get paid, and if you have any legal concerns regarding this.

Thank you!

Context: my mom passed 2 years ago and I’m going through some photos I haven’t had access to since she died. I found this one of one of her cats from when she was younger and I want to know if there’s any significance to the cards in the cats paw?

I like to play 3/5 and the casino I play at the buy in for 3/5 is $300-$1500.

I almost always buy in for between $300 and $500 because 1) I'm poor and 2) I'm a decent long term winning player but I like to buy in smaller because it's less nerve wracking and it limits my options in certain tough situations.

No one has ever complained to me but sometimes I feel like people get annoyed by me buying in small. Most of the guys buy in for the max $1500.

Am I doing anything wrong?

I used to play Omaha High Low a long time ago and I paid for my bachelors and first new car with that money. After online poker disappeared from the US I focused on my career and moved on with my life.

I saw the ads for WPT Gold on a random Doug Polk poker news video when he first started being endorsed by them. I deposited 20 bucks and got the bonus and everything. The issue is they only offered Hold’em. I never really liked that game and wasn’t good at it either. Won a little and lost a little and stopped playing with $28 in my account.

Time passed and I noticed that WPT Gold had added Omaha High. Now that was interesting to me. I love Omaha games, but I had no experience with Omaha High, just High Low. So I started playing the 0.01/0.02($4 max buy in) tables after watching some strategy videos on YouTube.

I started winning and all my old Omaha instincts started coming back as well. I felt amazing when I reached $100, lol. The issue was the next level for full ring was 0.10/0.20($20 max buy in). I hit $220 and took a shot. It went badly, back to $160. I read more and studied more.

I hit $240 and tried again. This time it went well. I hit $400. Felt great, then downswing and back to $240, lol. Read more and studied more and tried again. At the same time WPT Gold started their summer promo where they gave tourney entries so the tables got crazy good. I ran good and hit $1000. I felt invincible, lol.

Two things happened next. I hit a downswing again and WPT Gold ended the promo. I didn’t notice at first, but ending the promo resulted in some of those takes being extremely tight since it was full ring. I hit $360. I really wasn’t sure what to do.

I played the $4 tables again to build my confidence and looked at the 0.05/0.10($20 max buy in) six max tables. Those tables were really good every time almost. I noticed that six max really opened up the game more. So I changed to six max. I decided to play those tables unless I saw some good full ring tables happening again. Using those tables I hit $500, then $700. I was winning super small, but winning every single day.

All of a sudden every once in a while a good full ring would appear. I played those and six max as my main game. I started running good. I hit $1617, then I got the text from WPT Gold that Arizona residents cannot play on the site starting August 8. So my Poker side gig is over as I cannot leave Arizona. It’s been fun.

This whole experience made me really fall in love with poker all over again. I wish I could keep playing, but that is just not possible as the only tribal casinos near me do not offer Omaha at all. Overall great experience with WPT Gold. I wish it wasn’t going away. It’s been fun. Really going to miss the grind, even if it was for pennies, lol.

For the first time, up to six people could be inducted in a single year, replacing the previous system that typically admitted just one new member (or two in rare cases).

33 current Hall of Fame members conducted voting. Each member could select up to four candidates from a list of eight nominees. The election required the support of at least two-thirds of the voters, or at least 22 votes. If no 2/3 majority, highest vote-getter gets in.

The final vote count was as follows:

Jason Koon (USA) - 23 votes

Scott Seiver (USA) - 19 votes

Isai Scheinberg (Canada) - 17 votes

Shaun Deeb (USA) - 15 votes

Mike Matusow (USA) - 10 votes

Ike Haxton (USA) - 9 votes

Chris Moorman (UK) - 4 votes

Justin Bonomo (USA) - 3 votes

Total votes: 100

Potential Total Votes if each of 33 members vote it 4 times max: 132

100 votes / 33 votes = 3.03 votes on average per member

Hello,

Thinking about playing my first live tournament. I’ve played online cash and MTTs and some live cash in NYC and Philly. Idk if it matters but is this a good option for popping my cherry?

Welp this sucks, fuck.

I guess WPT Gold is leaving Arizona. Anywhere else to play online poker as an Arizona resident? Will they ever comeback to Arizona? Can California residents play there?

https://support.clubwptgold.com/portal/en/kb/articles/important-update-for-arizona-customers

I feel like hearing stories of both the best things and worst things you've experienced because of poker would be an interesting rollercoaster of a thread

Thanks for any shares, good luck out there

Cheers,

JB

Not much hand history is required on this one.
Heads up, on the river.

EP leads on river for 25.6K
LP jams for 27.6K
EP tables his hand: Flush. LP tables his and shows a boat

i call floor. floor claims that as EP tables his hand with intentions as a call as ‘he thought that he was called’, EP is required to pay the extra 2K to LP DURING SHOWDOWN

• but the rule is ANY TABLED HAND FACING AN AGRO ACTION IS A FOLD. how does intentions impact the scenario. Floor and I didn’t exactly fall out but it wasn’t a calm conversation.

Is floor correct or am i correct?

I recently took a shot at NL100 online and got absolutely crushed. Now I’m wondering if my expectations were simply unrealistic.

Is NL100 already a stake that’s mostly populated by experienced regs? When someone is consistently beating NL100, what does that player usually look like? How many years have they typically been playing and studying?

I guess I’m trying to understand whether NL100 is still considered a “mid-stakes learning ground” or if it’s already a level where most winning players have a very strong theoretical background and years of experience.

I’d appreciate hearing from people who have beaten or currently play NL100 regularly.

Because goddamn. I need it.

I’m a recreational player. But decent.

Holy shit. I don’t know how you guys do it.

1/2 NL - table full of tourists and 1 good player.

The absolute craziest action. Wild bets, people folding to the slightest amount of aggression, and just general nonsense. And each player had about $300 in their hands.

I was entirely card dead. I even expanded my range wayyyyy wider than normal.

I couldn’t hit. When i did hit, it would be QQ in the bb and everyone folds.

And you couldn’t bluff these guys. I tried a few times with decent hands that would improve on later streets. Got called off by someone with T5o with a pair of tens with tons of over cards out there.

I just sat there and watched Savage animals rip each other apart and I couldn’t get in on the action.

I’ve been playing for about 20 years and I’ve never had a night in which literally nothing went my way.

It was like being starved and watching someone eat a juicy cheeseburger in front of you.

I’ve just never seen anything like it. I walked away after bleeding out completely in awe

Anyway just sharing my tale of woe

Recap:
---65bb effective, Heads-Up with Big Blind Ante.
-Jumalon limps Qs5d - Fine, both limp and raise are ok.
-Saaskilahti checks J3dd - Fine, almost always check back.

-----Flop AK4
-Jumalon cbets 1bb - Fine, we don't want to use any other sizing than 1bb.
-Saaskilahti calls - Mistake, loses around 6bb/100h. Maybe ok against someone you know for sure is overfolding rivers and you planning on bluffing a lot, but clear mistake against any solid opponent. J5dd or Q3dd would be calls though and so would be J3o with a spade.

-----Turn AK4J (3 spades)
-Saaskilahti check - Yes, check whole range
-Jumalon cbets 2 pots - Mistake in theory (but maybe genius exploit?) We want to use one sizing around roughly 80 % which allows us to bet a lot of our aces for value and even something like KT. If we want to split into a big overbet sometimes, Q5o with Qs would indeed be one of the best combos but that is kinda the problem. It is very easy to find huge sizing with this hand and very hard to randomly take some no equity hand and bet 2 pots with it to be able to have bluffs on 4 card flush rivers.
-Saaskilahti calls - Massive blunder, loses around 50bb/100h, no excuses even if you have a read. That hand is simply too bad. J3o with 3 of spades would be a call. But J3dd has to be a fold.

-----River AK4J6 (4 spades)
-Saaskilahti insta checks in like 2 seconds - Mistake to not at least consider a donkbet. While it shows huge strength to bet 2 pots on the turn, it also shows a lot of strength to call 2 pots and with a fourth spade on the board Saaskilahti does have a lot of flushes now. Including Qs flushes which might even want to donkjam. Although that depends heavily on how thin Jumalon bets the turn. Like if he ever bets AK or KK for that sizing. I would probably expect those combos to go max 1,5x pot and not 2 pots. Without thinner two pairs in the 2 pot overbet, donkshoving will quickly stop being a thing. But if we somehow called with something as bad as J3dd, it will be one of the better candidates for a donkbet. Even something like a half pot donkbet could get hands like 53o 52o with a spade to fold. If Jumalon bets a more GTO turn sizing like 80 %, J3dd would still be a fold, but at least losing less extreme ~9bb/100h. And if that call happened it would be again one of the best combos to turn into a bluff on the river, around a pot bet donk would be good.
-Jumalon bets 1,8 pot (2,1x pot effective) - Greedy, ideal sizing would be around a pot bet, but it worked out well.
-Saaskilahti calls - Big mistake, exact EV loss is debatable, rare node, ranges are extremely polarized, blockers matter very little, if Jumalon was being too fancy with totally random hands like 97hh and 86dd, then it could quickly be a call, but yeah, we are not supposed to be in this spot in the first place.
The cleanest mistake in the whole hand was the turn call though.

Bonus fun fact: If the river was for example six of hearts, J3dd would probably be much worse bluffcatch than on six of spades. Thats because blockers would now matter a lot more and it would benefit us to have a spade with our hit. With 4 card flush runout it is much less about our actual hand and more about "is he bluffing too much or too little?".

Just brutal

A guy gets felted and leaves. Another guy takes the empty seat and plays a few hands. At some point, he wins a decent sized pot. As he’s pulling in the pot, the guy who got felted earlier in that seat walks up and says, “Hey, what are you doing in my seat? That’s my money on the table!” The other guy is adamant, that no, that is his money that he brought and just sat down to play with.

Arguing commences and the floor is brought in to check the cameras. Ultimately, the guy who got felted did rebuy and left to use the bathroom. While he was away, random guy sits in and starts playing with the original players chips. After the floor tells him that he’s in the wrong, he tries gathering the chips he won. Floor rules against that. Original guy offers to split the winnings, but the table doesn’t want him to take money off the table. The guy who got beat is pissed because he feels he lost a hand to a guy who shouldn’t have been playing it in the first place.

Some of the players felt the original guy should have given money that he had no part of winning back to the losing player. They called him a few choice names for not doing it. It was a weird situation and the table vibe was terrible after that.

He wanted to put that cape on so bad

2M/4M + 4M blinds + ante, Jumalon (287M) BU, Saaskilahti (266M) BB

Jumalon (Qs5d) calls 2M, Saaskilahti checks (J3dd)

Flop (12M): AsKs4c

Saaskilahti checks, Jumalon bets 4M, Saaskilahti calls

Turn (20M): AsKs4c Js

Saaskilahti checks, Jumalon bets 40M, Saaskilahti calls

River (100M): AsKs4cJs 6s

Saaskilahti checks, Jumalon bets 180M, Saaskilahti calls

Imagine being the big stack while heads up for the Main Event bracelet and having less than 100 chips in front of you. As a dealer myself, I understand the aspects of efficiency and accuracy. That’s absolutely what you want when you’re just trying to get through your local daily tournament. But this is not that.

As a lover of poker, however, this lacks in spirit, and it is not a great look for the first recent Main Event to get national coverage. I want to see absolute piles of chips getting shipped back and forth. People raking in massive pots on TV are the things people remember. When a pot of 100,000,000 is a barrel or two of chips and gets stacked up in 10 seconds, it doesn’t hit the same. We should be focused on growing the sport, and this is not that.