Hello, everyone, Welcome back to a new episode of the Poker Go Podcast. My name is Donny Peters. His name is Timothy Duckworth. How you doing, sir, I'm doing good. I relaxed and where you go? Well, that's good. I'm gonna be upfront and just say that you sound like crap on this microphone, so we'll see if rich the producer can figure it out. I don't understand it. You obviously don't understand it. So you know, we're just two idiots on a microphone right now, and we're hoping the genius that is Rich Ryan can can figure out your sound a little bit. But he's probably gonna message us and you know, complain, but whatever, we'll figure it out from here. It's good to be back. It's been a minute and we did a podcast. I don't even remember. It's been too busy, man. It's just stuff just getting in the way. It's just been it's been hectic out there. But what are you going to do? It is Monday, March eighteenth. We are gearing up for the PGT PLO series coming in a few days. On today's show, we're gonna do a little bit of a recap of the mixed game series that recently ran and concluded over at the Pokerro Studio. We'll get into the Plo series and also touch on the US Poker Open that has coming up. We announced a new PGT event down in Texas, baby, the Texas Poker Open, so we'll touch on that. I gotta get Tim's temperature on the Becker versus Tice situation, wager, whatever you want to call it. And then I guess we're gonna have to talk about this Triton Poker Series festival, because good lord, sir, these numbers out of this series are unreal. This episode the Poker Go Podcast is brought to you by storm x, the exclusive cryptocurrency partner of poker Go. Storm x makes it easy to earn crypto cash back. All you have to do head on over to storm x dot io, sign up and start shopping online and then once you start doing that, you will start earning crypto cash back. Earning crypto does not have to be hard with Earning crypto is easy, all right, PGT Mix Games. Max Hoffman, I guess kind of a new kid on the block. In a little bit of a way. He has crowned the series champion Max Hoffman hails from the East Coast. Believe. He started out in his professional life not as a poker player, but as a quantitative trader, I believe, and then took a break from that to dive into the world of professional poker, and it seems like it's going all right for him. He is now the PGT Mixed Games Champion for twenty twenty four. He cashed five times. He didn't get a win, but he did have two runner up finishes, had a few other deep runs as well. Cashed for more than three hundred and seventy six thousand dollars total, played really well throughout. He was pretty much always in contention, you know, making some noise. There was what ten events he cashed half of them, So, you know, really really good job from Max Hoffman. Somebody that's you know, I think is now probably gonna be on people's radars as it pertains like you know, bigger buying mixed game stuff at the World Series of Poker. I'm not sure how much he you know, dives into the other stuff or you know, where his comfort level is with you know, Nola at Holdham, plo et cetera. At least as straight straight tournaments or whatnot, because he you know, he obviously played those within some of these mixes. But yeah, be on the lookout for Max Hoffman, really really good showing from him. How do you feel about the turnoff, Buddy? It was okay? I mean, look, we didn't okay, we didn't smash expectations or anything. We knew that we were going up against try and we knew there was plenty of other stuff going on around the world, and but all in all, I think we were kind of happy at the at the numbers. There was a few people that didn't play that we thought would, but that's I don't know one named I don't we can call him that the guy you invited into the commentary box should have been firing every event, mister Kevin Goha. Let's us leave at that. But anyway, look, I think it's it's you know, we made this a point when planning this one that it would be once a year going forward. I think the timing is very important. We've already kind of blocked off the Super Bowl time next year. Obviously this this year we had. You couldn't have stayed in Vegas for less than a thousand dollars a night, so we had to kind of move it. But next year, back before Super Bowl, I think that's kind of the target window, and I think the numbers will go up. We'll tweak the schedule, we'll start fresh, We'll look at the numbers that perform the best, the events have performed well, and kind of go from there. Already a lot of talk about adding some new events, removing some, so we're going clean slate. We're going to start planning it during the World Series with a lot of the lot of help from the mixed game guys. What are you going to remove? What are you taking out? Triple Start? No, that's the best event I think, to be honest, the Big Bet Mix doesn't quite fit in the schedule. It's a great event, but it's heavily reliant on non mixed game plays to jump in and therefore then the mix game guys jump in. We didn't see that this year, you know, Like I said, people were at trying people at other stuffs, like over the Road at the Wind. So I think that one's an easy one to remove. Yet a lot of negative talk about Triple stud so that could go. I could see the schedule getting shorter. Maybe we add a five koe. I know Alan Kessel will be happy with that one. But like I said, firsht Slate, we're gonna just look at numbers, uh, talk talk with Ari, see what they want to put on too, because you know, at the end of the day, they're trying to make sure they cover the bills, be able to pay the dealers, and cover the food and their drinks. So you know, we've got to we've got to weigh everything up. Do you think that this tells us anything about the state of mixed games and let me kind of expand on that a little bit before you answer, but you know, the state of mixed games at the higher stakes, and then also like leading into the summer the World Series of Pokera, of course, like does this tell us anything about what we can expect numbers wise for the World Series or is that just completely separate in your mind? It's definitely separate. You know, you can just look at the player pools for those World Series events and there's people that you know, Nevin coming to Vegas outside of the World Series. Obviously, there's people that weren't at this series. You know, honestly, I think we did a bit of a disservice to the mixed game community by running the Fall one. Obviously, people wanted it, you know, we we were trying to capitalize on the success of the February one in twenty twenty three, and you know, taking so much money out of them. Hold on, let me just jump in. You're biting the bullet there. But the idea to run the second one was kind of not even on our radar if it wasn't for the players pushing me. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, but I'm saying, like the they pushed for it really hard. You know, a lot of people coming out of the first one in those immediate days and weeks. You know, even during that first one again, we're going back to the first half of twenty twenty three when we had the first PGT mixed game series, you know, the players are like, wow, turnouts are great, Maybe we should think about running it back to the second one then all summer, you know, every time we saw a mixed game player in this sort of you know, higher buying community, they were like, yeah, I missed the first one, didn't know how it was going to do, would definitely come for a second one. A lot of those people that said that ended up not showing up. So in a lot of ways, I mean, you can't ask for something and then don't show up. I mean, like, end of the day, the numbers are going to speak and it could get pulled. I'm not saying it's going to be, but I'm saying, like, if you guys push for something out there in the community, you have to then support it because without that support, it's not going to last too long. I mean, yeah, I agree with you. We just everyone just got a little ego, right like, and that's the reason why we put the other one in. Poker players were impatient. Yeah, no way, no way, man. You also have to realize that, you know, unlike the no limit or PAYEO people, you know, if you have a bad series, you can go rebuild that, you know, grinding low stakes cash, grinding, low buying tournaments. With mixed it's just a differ different, a different world. There's there's not like a plethora of mixed events, you know in Vegas or anywhere around the country. You know, there's not a lot of cash games. There's not really a lot of online mix so it's hard to rebuild a bankroll playing mixed games. If you have a tough series and like you know, we do ten events, they're all big buyings as re entries, you know, like unfortunately you could go bust though very quickly playing our series, and I think that's non ideal. That's something we change this year with the two five ks to open, and I think next year we'll probably see a similar, similar structured schedule, the lower buyings at the start building up, maybe knock off an event just to you know, keep keep more people afloat, you know, they don't they don't know, they don't have to come and potentially lose everything. So but yeah, all in all, I thought it'd hit about the numbers I expected, maybe a little onda. You know, it's a great series. No one else really does anything like this. It's good to see a few new faces making appearances. Good to see certain people win events that you know hadn't you know, one events before in the studio. So that was pretty good too. Yeah, I thought the numbers for like the first well, the first four events are probably a little bit down from what I had hoped that they would be at. Kicking things off as a five k horse event had eighty seven entries. Then you had the five K a game at eighty nine entries. Then you had those two same tournaments only at the ten K price point, you had a ten K horse sixty three entries, ten K eight game sixty one entries. You know, I thought the two five k's would have for sure pushed towards one hundred more been in that ninety five to one hundred range, if not Eclipse one hundred, and then the two ten k's of those would have been pushing eight. So a little bit shy there now. That said, I was very pleasantly surprised with the turnout for the twenty five K Championship, which got forty one entries, you know, that one. You know, a little bit of worry after seeing kind of the turnout throughout the series, being like, Okay, maybe this is only gonna draw like twenty five to thirty or something. Ends up drawing really well. Gets forty one entries in that one. So so that was a good turnout there. You know, we got we had some faces come out that I think it was good to have. Jason Mercier is like back playing, which is good, and you had Philip Bramos made the trip over. He was out there battling. You know, Phil Helmuth played a handful of events. He cashed in two of them, so it was good to see Phil Helmuth out there. I know he did share on social media beforehand that he was going to be playing this series, but we all know how that goes. You know, he can talk about it and ultimately not show up. So so yeah, I think overall it was it was pretty good. I like the fact that we got you know, kind of a new face up there winning. It was a challenging leaderboard race all throughout the series. Dan Zach who was the winner of the first ever PGT mix game series. He ended up finishing in second place on the leaderboard to Hoffman. Then it was Jerry Wong and third, John Hennigan in fourth, and Daniel mcgran new in fifth. I just want to touch on the GRANEUW because I mean he's been pretty much on fire this year so far. You know, again, we'll remind everyone he came out of twenty twenty three. He put a video out there, he put his stats out there like he does every single year. You know, he says he was down what like two point two or two point three million from the year before. He really made it a point to going too twenty twenty four, emphasizing quality over quantity, not just firing as much volume as he could, but really being selective, at least as it pertains to us on the PGT. You know, we've seen a bit of that where he's skipped a handful event at times. You know, he flat out told us he probably and be playing the five K events, and then you know, some ten k's here and there, if he hasn't felt up to it, he's skipped it. So he certainly is taking that quality over quantity approach, and he's done. He's done well overall. You know, he has a bunch of cashes so far this year on the the PGT. He is sitting in fifth place on the PGT season long leaderboard with five and twenty one points. He added four cashes during this PGT Mixed Games series, so a couple of deep runs he has. He hasn't won a PGT event yet this season, but that doesn't mean that it's it's not coming. I mean it certainly feels like it's coming. He has seven PGT cashes so far this season. You know, a bunch of them are our final table appearances. You know, getting close. He got as close as they could get in one of the events at the PGT Mixed Game Series, event number seven, he took second place in that one. He had another third place and then a fourth and a fifth as well in there, So Nigranny was certainly on the right path to correcting things from a year ago. And then also just want to touch on Jeremy Osmas. You know, he had a bunch of a bunch of cashes during this series and moved up to seventh place on the PGT season long leader well with four and forty three points. Kind Of the reason why I wanted to point out these two is, at least from a PGT perspective, it's interesting that like these two in a way have an advantage right with the added Mixed Game Series and added PLO because they play everything including the No Limit. So I'm just kind of curious on I guess your thoughts there. I mean, there's some other players I would kind of throw into this mix, but like Nick Shulman for example, but he obviously went over to Triton, so he didn't play. Probably a Chino Reim as well, you know, just those guys that ca and do play everything, right, they're not just like like you look at like John Manette, not that Jominette can't play Nolan hold them in PLO, right, but like John Manette really only plays mixed games, you know, so like he's not going to dive into like the US poke gropen, et cetera. You know. And then you have like guys that are more kind of straight nolan At hold Them or maybe they're nolan At hold Them slash PLO and they don't dive into the mixed games at all. So it's just kind of an interesting way to look at how the schedule shapes up for a handful of players. I can I can throw you some more names. Alex Livingston, there you go, rass, you know, Jim Collopy, Jaylen Lindy. The difference with a lot of those guys that we've mentioned either that I really live in Vegas, like Alex Livingston travels a lot, Jim Callapy travels all these events as well, or there's the motivation to play, you know, Nick Schulman, Brian rast Hannigan in whatever Moody wakes up in. These guys aren't you know here wanting you know, O need to play every day, while Nograno and Levison I mean, sorry, Negrono and Jeremy live here. They do want to play, so definitely have an advantage. But there's a lot of other people in that same position, Steven Chidwick to name another one, that just choosing other options, whether it's trying traveling. So there is quite a few people, So there's a decent amount that have this advantage of being able to play everything. This is a question of if they want to play everything. Yeah, And as the things stand right now, it remains David Coleman out in front of the PGT leaderboard for this season. Of course, he had an incredible start to the year from the PGT kickoff series. We should be seeing Coleman back for probably PLO. I think he has some events listed on Poker Steak if I remember correctly. If not, for sure, he's going to be around for USPO definitely. So yeah, I mean, and those are the two things that I kind of want to touch on next. You know, we have the PGT PLO series coming up. It starts on Wednesday. Again. We are recording this on Monday. Ten events. The lowest buying is a fifty one dollars buying event they go all the way up to the championship. That's a twenty five K championship. We have a pretty cool announcement in that PLO Mastermind is going to be the presenting sponsor for the PGT PLO series this year. And along with that comes a nice little offer from PLO Mastermind that would allow you guys to unlock your PLO potential. Your gateway to mastering both fore card and five card PLO is over at PLO Mastermind. You guys can get started today for free at plomstermind dot com slash poker Go. I'm told no credit card required. You can just sign on up, get in there and start trying things out. I might have to start trying out the five card PLO because I feel lost when it comes to five card filo. That's for damn sure. So yeah, but yeah, ten events coming up starting when I mean, this one should be popular again, I would assume. So like the Mixed Game series, we did run two versions or two editions of the PLO series last PGT season. This will be the first one this season. You know, it's still TBD if we're going to run back a second one. But we all know PLO performs a bit better than mixed games overall, so at least more potential that we run back a second one of these. But for this first one, you know, it's I think it's going to be good. You know, we're there's only two places out there that I know of that are running PLO only series. It's us and then it's over for the Big Rap at King's Casino in Roster. It's such an it is such a great name. I mean, other than jealous, other than us in them, I could just be ignorant to the fact that there is another, you know, like PLO centric series out there. But yeah, I mean, I think it's going to be great. I'm assuming you've talked to a lot of the players to have a better feel like what the turnout is going to be, like, is it going to be good? You know, I honestly haven't talked to too many because the first two are so good that I feel like we're kind of expecting it to be the same. I think the schedule is much much better, you know, we have I think it's three We start with a five K seventy five hundred BOUNDI back to a five K, up to a ten back to a five K Progressive. So the five K Progressive is a new event for this series. We see the numbers on that on these lower buyings, hold them or p low. It's it just crushes. These guys want to gamble, they want to play these kind of turboy events, and I'm looking forward to the blood that will come from the five K Progressive Bountie. So yeah, that's the change we've made. And the scheduling, it's just all high events except for the finale. I think it's a better way to capitalize on people wanting to travel, you know, the guys that are coming from Europe, the guys that are coming from Texas, you know, wherever to play. They can pretty much play the first nine events, you know, with no breaks. So trying to lock him in the studio, yeah, I would expect, you know, all the all the big guns are out in terms of the polo sense, you know, Dylan Wiseman comes top of mind. Alex Livingston, you touched on him earlier. I would expect him to be around as well. I'm assuming Jeremy Osmas is going to be playing a bunch. Daniel Legrand, who should be in there. I believe Josh Ari a message. You said he's all booked up, right, I mean so, yeah, Like that's the one I was ruling out. I talked to Nigrano and is like, he's getting married. I'm like, yeah, but the series stops before he's wedding. You can play a few events. And then he messaged me saying I just booked him coming. I'm not playing the main event. So if we're getting in for eight events, that's eight more than I expected. Now, I just really need him to perform really well, so he has to stick around to try and win the overall sees championship. Yeah. I mean, I think it'll be another good series from the PLO crowd. I mean, I think that they've shown us that this is something that they want. I know I've said this before, but this is something that they want. They come out, they support it, you know. So it's going to be a lot of fun. We will be streaming every single final table on poker Goro and on the Poker gro YouTube channel. Believe it'll be myself and Remco Rinkim in the booth throughout, So if you guys want to come hang out, would certainly encourage you all to do so. Again, The series starts on Wednesday, March twentieth, and then that first final table will go live on Thursday, March twenty first all live reporting will be handled on PGT dot com by Tim and the team, So it's gonna be good. Hope we get a bunch of the Europeans once again. That's always the fun crowd that I like to see. You know, Elias Parson and Joni Ukamminen, you know, Jonas Kronwit are all those guys like eyes. I can't wait to see all those guys out there. Maybe you draw you know, a handful more in I feel like the second time around we got some kind of new faces out there. So we'll see and we'll see if the PLO god himself, latarro uh Guerra, is gonna gonna come out and try and defend his title once again. Who won the second one? Daniel Gang. Oh yeah, Daniel Gang from New Hampshire out of all places, came out played really well, so we'll see if we get him back. I remember talking to him when he showed up before even number one, Like walking into the studio, I had no idea what was going on, like, you know, just looked like a. He looked like, you know, for all intents and purposes, you know, for lack of a better term, a fish out of water in a lot of ways. But you know, it was because he was in a new place. He'd never been there before, he didn't really know how things worked or whatnot. And then you know, lo and behold, he goes on to win the whole damn series. So that's cool. I would guess that we see him come back again. So so yeah, it should be a should be a lot of fun. I wonder if we'll get any Jason for this one. I think we asked him about it, right and he said very possible. He was here for what ten days, so the fact that the series is so close, maybe not, but maybe we can little run back because of the march madness. Who knows, who knows, it would be great to have him back. I think we'll probably get some some Jared Blesnig out there as well. So yeah, this series is always a lot of fun. So yeah, as I said, you guys can tune in on PGT dot com starting Wednesday for live report and then also on Thursday for the live streams, and then we have us Poke Roopen is coming back not too far away. It's going to be here before we know it. It's less than a month away. Monday, March eighth, eight events as part of the twenty twenty four USPO fifty one hundred dollars on the front end going up to the championship event that is twenty five two hundred dollars. You know, this one should be drawing our regular big name pop up their players, all the high stakes guys, So this one will be a lot of fun. As always, I predict this series will be huge. Really, I think the opening event is going to be massive. Us what's your number? I need, I need, I need to put some you know six good. Well, first of all, let's remember it's a five K. But no, I know, I know, I just unlike Pogo Cup, we were against Borgata, we were against Seminole, we had just had fourteen events in the studio two weeks a prior. I think for the no limit only guys, you know, let's say they played Pococo Cup, they either went to try it or they've got win millions and then they got a long break. And I think the USPO we're going to see some guys come out that we that they didn't play the Cup, also our regulars, maybe some satellite winners, and just I think will be a big one. Yeah, I listen. I'm hoping it'll be a big one. I've always kind of felt that us Poke Ropen is like one of our best brands, if not the best brand. I don't know. I just I really like it. I always like this timeslot that it falls into, Like, I just think it's a really fun, cool series. So yeah, it should be really good overall. There's gonna be a bunch of satellites leading up to it, in the days leading up to it. You guys can check that stuff out on PGT dot com. Just hit the schedule tab up at the top. If you're on mobile, just click the little Hamburger menu and then hit schedule. And we're also running a special strategy workshop is what we're calling it, coaching from Andrew Lichtenberger and Andrew Moreno. So the two Andrews are going to be running a special seminar at the studio. It includes two days of coaching, one day of a live satellite offering, two seats for the USPO. And if that is something that interests you guys out there, I would encourage you to head on over to get dot PokerGO dot com slash Strategy and all the information will be on that page. One more event here to talk about in terms of what's upcoming on the PGT, and this one is a fun one. It's been in the works for a while. I know Tim has been hard at work with our partners down in the lone Star state that is Champions Club Texas. We announced the Texas Poker Open April twenty fourth through May fifth. This series will take place, as I said, Champions Club Texas, which is either in Houston or like right outside Houston. Two million dollars guaranteed main event. The main event is a thirty three hundred dollars buy in. There are several starting fights and then there are several other high roller tournaments as part of this series. This one could be bananas, absolutely bananas. Why what do you think? What's this? What's it going to be like? We go to First of all, we're going to hit the guarantee. I hope so, I mean, I think the guarantee is certainly going to be hit. We're doing something we've never done. You know, this is this is not our cup of Tea. We're just hoping it works. We're attaching ourselves to them. We're going to be their live reporting. Obviously, we have seven high Roller events throughout the series, so you know, speaking to a lot of players during the mix game series, they're going to be coming. So that's that's pretty that that was good to hear. We just kind of needed a lot of reliance on, you know, not our regulus. If we're being honest, the guys that play that buying thirty three hundred play the wpts. We've got a perfect window. You're either going to be a seminal or the win. Then you can come to Texas play the two million dollar main event Firings and Bullets, and then you can go to Choctaw. It's perfect, it's perfect timing, come Experiencechampions Club. It's a great venue, great food. So I'm looking I'm looking forward to it. But yes, obviously there's a little bit of nervousness with the guarantee because, yeah, like I said, we've never done it before. Bet from a betting man. We should make it and then next year let's op it. Yeah, you know, I'm not too worried about the guarantee. I think it's easily going to get hit. I think you know, it'll come in right around two and a half million. I believe Champions Club has done a guarantee this big before, right, Ah, yes I do, and they got it. So I would say that, you know, coupled with the the marketing that we can help add to this thing, like, then yeah, I think we're going to get there. And I mean I'm looking at it from I think a lot of our regulars are going to be there. It just it benefits them to head down there. You know a lot of them travel to a lot of the bigger stops around the general tournament circuit anyway, right, and I think that this is now included in those For some players that might not necessarily travel for something that you know, just has a thirty three hundred dollars main event, they get the fact that, yeah, there are those high rollers that are all added to the schedule as well, so you know, they can all they can play a whole bunch of that stuff. And then I really want to see kind of who comes out of it in terms of earning PGT points that might start playing some more of our stops. Right, maybe someone has a lot of success here. Then they go into the World Series, they have a little bit more success in the in the PGT qualifying events that are part of the twenty twenty four diabasopy, and then we see him at Poker Masters, you know, so like that's kind of like what I want to see Snowball from this whole thing. So so we'll see. There's going to be live streaming, I believe, if I remember correctly, from day one A the main event, there's like, I don't know, twelve days of live shot. I don't remember how many days exactly there are, but there's streaming every single day from the main event. Then we're the second, like second half of the schedule where a lot of the high rollers are. The two day high rollers will be streaming the final tables of those high rollers. So a ton of streaming is coming out of Champions Club Texas. Tim, you already talked about the venue. I have not been there yet. I've already been talking them like, you know, should I go? I want to go, So let's see if I can make that happen. The fact that they have a hotel attached to their poker room, I think is great. Everyone raves about the food there. I've heard the games, the cash games specifically are pretty wild, and if that translates over to the tournaments, then this one's gonna be pretty fun and probably pretty valuable. The time slot, as you mentioned, I think is great, you know, even without like the win slash semino beforehand, just the fact that this leads right into WPT Chalktaw. As far as I know, in order to get the Chalktaw you got to fly into somewhere in Texas like Dallas or wherever and then drive up. At least that's I believe that's how it's done. So so why not come a little bit earlier, play this, then go on up to chalkdaw you know, in a way, I think this can also benefit Chalkdaw right, I mean, players get you know, more bang for their buck in terms of a time frame, you know, spend two to three weeks playing poker in that region. So so yeah, chalkdaw always draws really well. All these Texas rooms seem to be gangbusters, you know, with with the numbers that they put out, So I would expect very good things out of Texas and for this Texas Poker open all details are available over on Champions Club Texas dot com. So yeah, if you want to check out the room itself, see what's available. I believe you can do all of the hotel bookings right through there. They have seventy one rooms at their hotel. I mean, all these pictures look super nice. You've been there, so you'll tell me if I'm an idiot. But it's the room's a nice, The food is great. The food is the most underrated thing about the property. So if you want to stay rated, everyone tells me about the food, so I would say it's properly rated. I mean that's like the first thing everyone says to me. Jeff, you don't really talk about a poker venue and lead with food, though, is what I mean. So, like, I don't know, you should just come and have like a steak delivered to you that's on fire while you're playing one to No Limit hold them in the meetup game or whatever Brent and Jeff cook up. You can have a steak delivered to you, it's on fire and you're eating it at the table. It's the best experience ever. Well, I don't know if I'm going to be playing any one too, just because I will just absolutely dust off and catch the whole point. It's not the whole point, not for my bank. Well no, no, thanks, all right, moving on, I listen. It's been around for a little while now, I still don't exactly know where things stay. And what I'm getting at is the Jeremy Becker versus land Entice bet wager situation whatever you want to call it. Apologies for my dogs. They are going crazy and they will not shut up. So basically you have Jeremy Becker going against land Entice in I'm guessing it's mutually played events. I know that. So this all spawned from like a back and forth between Daniel Legrandu and Matt Burkey. Okay, in a way, it's like they're kind of like the the Masters, and then like the Becker Entice are like the protege is coming up. So it's kind of this like old school versus new school, like kind of live field player versus gto sOliver kid. Like, it's got all these different angles right now. One of the interesting parts about this wager or competition, whatever you want to call it, is that, like the d Tales, at least as far as I know, aren't fully solidified yet I think like it all kind of came about in the first half of February. Everyone was getting all crazy, people were making bets, even I made bets, okay, but then I'm like, what, we don't even really know the terms. You know, first it was like mutually played events at the World Series of Poker. Then it seems like it kind of span to more stuff just during this time frame during the summer. I know, Daniel was talking about on Dat Poker podcast that like he's kind of open to whatever doesn't matter for him. He's crossbooking Becker against Tye versus Burkie's camp, and he's taken a hundred percent of the crossbooks, so you know, kind of at the end of the day, whatever they decide upon terms wise, you know, Daniels seems like he's pretty fine with but they're gonna go with it. But it kind of also makes things a little bit weird for I guess people like me who have already bet sides and we don't actually know the full terms of it, but you know, it is what it is. You and I haven't really talked about it much, so I guess I want to get your temperature on, Like, what do you think about it, like, who do you think is gonna come on on top? Like are you are you on team Becker? Are you on team Tice? Like well, what's your opinion here? I think it's stupid. What you think it's stupid? Or come on? I mean it's not stupid. This is great Land and Land and recently want a tournament at the wind like he's he's using the same cards that Jeremy always uses in the tournaments, you know, throwing a little friendly dig at him, like it's I'll tell you, I'll tell you why it's stupid because we're three what are we three months out from the World Series? Cool? They don't don't even have the terms identified. There's also loopholes. I'll give you the hypothetical Jeremy Becker registers on time in the one K Turbo and he's running up a chip stack Land and Tye should just find like, go find Jeremy Becker. Oh he has eight eight x starting stack in level three. I'm just gonna sit this one out. And then the event doesn't think that's that's They're going to iron all that stuff, so iron out the details and presented to the world. The world that seems to care so much about his little silly battle, then I don't have much interest in it. I like the idea, I like the the fact that it's like a there's some heat between both sides. I love that thing. But get me some rules and find me on May twenty eighth, then I'll give you my temperature reading on it. Wow, you're just you're just poop pooing the whole damn thing. Well, I'm on team Becker. I'll just put it out there. Already tried betting. I already already got some money down on team Becker again. Haven't find out the rules, I will select a side. That's my point. You know, I have to. I have to. I kind of want to take Landing. I kind of want to take Becker, but I need more info. Yeah, I mean, I'm also kind of like I need more info as well. But you know, I also just kind of want to back Becker in this. You know, nothing against land and Tice. I think he's a very good player, and I like him as well. You know, I'm just in this situation, I'm going with that that live grinder in this regard who I mean, I don't know who's actually making the the odds for this or if people are just spouting out nonsense. But it sounds like Becker is the favorite. People are like, yeah, he's minus one ten, I'll take Tyson at plus one ten. Well, I don't understand why this is just even money across the board. So yeah, but I'm I'm on team Becker, but you know I am listen, I will echo that, you know. I would like the terms to come out to kind of slidify things. I do think from a content perspective, like I'm always like team content at the end of the day, So I think this is going to create some good content for the series, you know, almost so much so that I feel like all media outlets, ourself included, should like dedicate actual time and resources to this thing. Do you remember the like in like every like livestoom that we do, we should have like a Becker versus Tys. No, We've got more important things to promine me. No, come on, If this is what's people care about, and this is what the people, I'll tell you what it is smart to do. If you're out there fill listen to us and you're an up and coming poker media person, go buy the domain. I don't know becka v tie or whatever it is, whatever that you can think of. And then you know how there's that website that tracks online streams, like how much people win or lose. I remember when Nigrano was playing polk online and people there was like a tracking of every match they played or every session they played. You need to own that. If you're like a freelance media guy, you should own that. Just go out there, buy the domain. Track every event, like get a media badge at the World Series, follow them round and like do like a live blog. Land and Tys just sat down in event five, Jeremy Becker no where to be found, and like update the stats. Just own all that content. There's my advice to someone out there that wants to have a fun summer project, because I ain't doing it. I mean, you don't necessarily have to do it. I'm assuming they're gonna have a lot of regular updates. I'm assuming Daniel's gonna have his vlog back just about every day. I know. I know it might not be every single day, because he might have some days off this year at the World Series of Poker, but for the most part, you know he's going to be doing some some updates, which I'm guessing he's gonna be fined in Jeremy within that and talking about how that thing's going as well. So and also like listen, there's it seems like even now, even before the terms are out there, there is enough money that's been wagered on both sides of this that people are gonna want updates. I mean that's just how it is. So you know, people are going to want updates. So somebody's got to have to make that happen one way or the other. And I think somebody good. I mean, if I if I was Poker News, I would I would dive into this. I would like stick one person on them NonStop. Kind of this is similar to twenty five K Fantasy, right, Like supposedly something's happening with Pokeeronews this year where they're going to track the people that's drafted better. I mean they should be tracking them anyway, But like, I mean, the people that are drafted in twenty five K Fantasy are like the one percent of the one percent of the people that play it that are to be anyway. Yeah, Dane Sean deep phil Ivy feel like it's like these people should be you should have their chip guns updated every fifteen minutes. Anyway. I mean, if there's no like this is, this is what I would suggest. And I know Daniel Listens, I know ODB Listens. I would hire someone let's call him Mickey Draft or whoever that cares, not just some bum off the street, someone that cares. I would say, we're going to pay you to do only twenty five K fantasy. Who's paying. I'm going to tell you how we're going to do it. We're going to free roll you a team in the thing in the twenty five K fantasy draft. So Mickey gets a twenty five K team and he gets let's call it ten ODB teams for free, right, and he's obviously going to work on the back end. But now he has significant upside. Right now, Look, okay, how is he going to pay for room and board? Well, he can sell some of his team, some of his action on Pocus take, so he could sell. I would never agree. Just let me let me tell you. I need guaranteed money. Okay, this is a contract. This is guaranteed money. You could know it's not sell sell some percentage of your team for cash to offset some of the accommodation cars. But you're you're basically banking on the upside of winning. Can you imagine if you got paid to do updates for the whole summer and then you want a quarter million dollars? Like that's what I'm saying. You're banking on upside. Now, you know you're going to probably spend five k accommodation, but like it's an r I ploy, you know, and yes, you should probably sell some of your team so you can have some money, Like you might want to sell you know, ten percent, so twenty five hundred bucks, right, and then you've got the ODB teams. But that doesn't really cost ODB or Daniel that much. It obviously just dilutes the prize pool a little bit. But I think everyone that does twenty five K fantasy would be like, that's fine. I think I'm okay with that because that's what they care about. They care about these updates. So you do it all on the website. Your sole job for the summer is just tracking twenty five K fantasy plays. You walk around the world series. This guy just sat, this guy's out, and just simple as that. If you think about it, there's a lot of upside for someone doing it that cares and also knows what they're doing drafting, I think you would one hundred percent do it if you didn't have a full time job. Yeah, I mean, listen, I thought I knew what I was doing drafting, and I will owe for every single year. I mean, that's just how it is. There's a lot of variance that comes into this thing. There's a lot of variants in poker itself. Imagine the variance that's in fantasy poker. I mean, that's just crazy to me. But it's it's twelve teams. The variance is a lot less than there was twenty teams last time. But well, we're going down here, then everyone's broke. No, yeah, I think it's actually going up too. But okay, let's say there's twenty teams, right, Let's say there's nineteen teams, and then the one bonus team is the media team, the real media team. And like, look, if you're Mickey, split it in half Mickey or like person A person B. You can do your shifts. You can sell sell you know, twenty percent, sure whatever you want, ten percent, figure it out, get some money back. You can also do stuff on the side there's probably a lot of you know, content and editorial writing. You could do four a poker News four poker dot org to supplement the income that is related to twenty five k fantasy. So there's ways to survive money wise. But you're basically saying, you know what, I'm gambling because you know what, everyone in this industry, they all gamble. They're gambling on potentially winning two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. One hundred fifty thousand dollars. Yeah, I mean fifty dollars. I wouldn't gamble on it. I would just rather like, yeah, but you have a more consistent real income. I'm talking about the freelancers out there, like you know which, I would not do that as a freelancer. I just wouldn't. I wouldn't gamble on that because you you need to have a guaranteed money coming out. That's why you sell some of your team. No, that's the guaranteed money because think about it. If you sell, if you hypothetically sold fifty percent, right, you're going to get twelve and a half k, which is a summer salary for some of these freelancers. Even more. Now, if you win, sure you have to pay that fifty percent back, so one hundred and twenty five k, But you just want one hundred and twenty five k for yourself, so selling some of your team, you could sell it at less than even money and get money back if you just just if you think about it, I bet you'll be like, you know what, that's actually a pretty good idea. It's it's only plus EV for the for the guy getting free road by Nigrano and ODB, And I'm like, I'm like ninety five percent sure that ninety percent of the people in the twenty five k would be okay with it, and the ODB one, that's what ODB runs that he just says, that's what we're doing, as simple as that. Yeah, I mean I would, I think I would try and find some sort of way to cover this thing if I was poker steak dot com because I feel like, independently, poker steak dot com should be hiring someone to cover all of their players that are selling action. Yeah. Yeah, I mean we've talked about that a lot. Yeah, I mean like I feel like that's like I feel like poker Steak should invest like in like a team of two people all summer to be like hey, you know whatever, and then like you get you get a list, Hey, these people sold action for this event. Let's make sure that we update them every single day. Like you know, maybe you get contacts of those players that are selling actions, so if they move seats or whatever, you can kind of always just keep tabs on them, and you know you're only focusing on it. I mean in a way, so poker steak dot com for those that don't know, used to be pocket fives dot com, right, you know, they were purchased and they did a domain switch, brand switch whatever. Now they are, you know, predominantly a staking platform. But back in the day, like two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, Pocketfies Live, they used to just track people the online guys that were like ranked highly on the Pocketfy's leaderboards. Like so in a way, you're bringing it back poker steak Live like whatever, and you're you're just updating those people because like you know, yeah, like it's great for like when I sell action on poker Steak, like I selection on pokers, say, okay, I don't I don't like to like tweet out my chip count. I don't like to do that I don't like when I see other people doing it. I hate when I do it right. But I also know that, like I want to update the people that are invested in me. I get it, Like if it's friends and family, Like, yeah, it's very easy. I fire up a WhatsApp group where I make a group text message or whatever, and I just update in there, like that's very simple. But I can't do this to people that are just unknown to me that are buying through this platform. But if there was some sort of like live updates feature within this, I think that that would be great to have, you know, and that it's just constantly updated, and like, you know, they don't. I don't think the volume is there where like one or two people can't handle this for a whole summer, and you know, you're just updating somebody's chip count every what half hour, you know, every twenty minutes to a half hour or so. I think that that's fairly doable. You can find out where they cash, enter results like all that sort of stuff. I think that that would be kind of a next step thing for the poke steak dot com platform. And then you know, I would I would tie in the twenty five K. And the reason that I would tie in the twenty five K fantasy is because we know that it's popular and it includes all the popular players at the World Series of Poker, and also it's something that the popular players talk about constantly on social media and whatnot. So that's a way to generate more traffic for poker steak dot com. So would include that in the job responsibilities of said person or said team if you if you bring them on to do that, I think that would be a cool little thing for poker steak dot com. Now, if you're Pokernews dot com, I mean, yeah, it's it's it's good to cover these people, but like, I don't know, it doesn't really like I mean when when I was a Poker News and when you were like working with them as well, like it we covered the draft and stuff like that, but like you didn't go too crazy with like the actual coverage of what was happening because that was just what you were doing anyway. Like you're the official live updates team, so you're just doing a lot of that coverage any way, and as long as you're generally on top of things within the grand scheme of being the official live updates team for the Dipcipe. Then you're going to cover all these players. Like that's just how it is. So I don't know how much it benefits Poker News to like go out of their way to like dedicate stuff to like just the twenty five K players, because in a way that might mean they take away from other stuff, and you don't want to do that. Like it should just be known that you're going to cover these twenty five K players. Like that is very simple. Like it's just there's like two hunderd players. I mean, just that those players are on your like your tier one, tier two list, you're just always covering them. End of story. I mean there's a reason that they're drafted. They're good players, they're well known, et cetera. Like you know, you're like it's very rare that, like you're a total unknown is getting drafted very very rare and probably was drafted by my team a lot of times. But that's just how it is. I would say that, look, you know, I preached this idea of free rolling whatever a team. You know, you could also just argue that, hey, Ne Groner, why don't you just pay this guy out of your pocket. Well, he probably doesn't want to, regardless of how rich he is. The other option is, actually, you know it's twenty five k, buy in, right, you make it a twenty five plus one one K. Now, if you don't want to pay the one k, that's fine. Your team isn't in the updates, like you're basically opting out of the updates. Now, if we know who's in this draft room, if they're spending twenty five, they're spending twenty six, and that's how you that's how you cover it. Then you don't have to dilute the prize poll. Maybe it's if they're getting twenty teams, maybe it's not one. Oh no, fuck it whatever, twenty five plus one k and you get updates for the whole summer of your team. You don't have to pay it. You can opt out, right, that's probably a better way to do it. I think I think you could actually do it much cheaper for so you would and were I mean, this is not on our list, but whatever, we're just rifflin. So we're going to go with this. Twenty five plus one is plus one thousand is way too much money. Twenty k for the summer, I know, it's not when you affector accommodation. No listen, it's too much money for like me as a team entering. You can opt out that opt out, no listen, But listen to what I'm gonna say. You do like twenty five thousand plus let's say three hundred I don't know, two hundred whatever, Okay, there are six hundred ODB teams. They could pay fifteen bucks each. But the thing is the thing is that the six hundred ODB teams are only drafting based on the players that are drafted in twenty five k. So it's not like you're going to have six hundred times ten players that like, so that six thousand players that the person or the team is going to have to cover, the person still only covers the core group of players plus the you know, the ODB whatever he calls them, the extra players or whatever they are that they put it in there. There's like a handful of like five to ten of them. So like, but you still like you can log in and see so like cause like, what what's what's an extra ten or fifteen bucks for an ODB team? How much the AB teams I can't remember, they're five hundred but then if you get the if you buy the extra player, I think they're five twenty five, so you know, just make it like five forty, Yeah, make it five forty with whatever who cares, and then you put that money in there. And like they're like, there's also like there's some cost. There's someone who runs the website. I know that for a fact. I talk with them every summer, like on the scoring and like making sure that things are up to date and whatnot, because they know I'm on the floor and whatnot. But it's like, the answer is that would be very simple. That's like between all that you can easily get up to like ten k if you price it right. It's gonna say. The answer is there is an answer. It's just does the Grano slash RDBA want to rely on Pocony's updates and no offense to Poconi's But yes, they were supposed to be following Eric Sidel and you know, Brian Rass, but they also have a lot of other jobs they're doing during the event, and you know, yes, things will fall through the cracks. Or do you want to hire a team of two people and literally their only responsibility is the one hundred and something people that are drafted in twenty five K fantasy. I think that's the best idea. Just figuring out how much you kind of want to allocate it. Your idea is good too, like smaller rich, but you rake Odie Bays, I still like the free roll. I think that's a pretty cool option where it costs no one anything. But this is not us to decide. We just want to be part of a lot of places out there. Do quote unquote maintenance fees, you know, Like I mean, there is a cost to operate stuff. We get it, you know, so, so yeah, I will say this in regards to twenty five K, I do think it is a It is a step in the right direction in terms of like the updates and the points and the leaderboard. Not having the online events count. Now as a team motor and somebody who did lean into the online stuff, maybe more so than other teams, maybe that puts me at a disadvantage, or maybe it makes with the advantage that I think I have a little bit smaller. But I also think that the fact that we have to wait three to four days for the updates to come in in terms of like who cash we're in a WSP event. It's just absurd, So we can't. He can't have it, like it's just not like it is. It'd be like playing fantasy basketball for the NBA and you have to wait four days for like the score to come out. Like this is not it's not possible. You can't do it, Okay, So so we're just going to be moving on. So so the online events, Daniel has already stated that those won't be counting this year, you know, so it does as it pertains to me, it is going to change my rankings a little bit. You know, Like we were big on John Reard in last year. No one kind of the schedule that he would play live, but also that he would be blasting everything online and we got a lot of points from that. So same with Sean Deebe. You know, he's gunning for everything because everything counts for Player of the Year. So does it change a little bit this year. I mean, we'll have to see how things go. But I'm excited to be backing and yeah, it's going to be fun. All right. Last thing we're going to talk about here the Triton Poker Series. It's still ongoing. I believe they're in the tail end of their schedule over in the JJU. Yeah, they go they go no them at hold them, then they go plo, then they go short deck, right. I mean that's like how it it passes or how it runs out. I mean the numbers from this series were just out of control, I mean obscene. All the events are big byans. The lowest byan is a fifteen K. They have fifteens, they got twenty twenty five's they got, they got the random bians like they got a thirty k on here, they got a thirty five plus two plus fifteen. That's a bounty tournament. You know, it's Tryon does some unique stuff. I believe they've had like a seventy five K in the past. You know, they have one hundred and fifty K, so it's it's interesting for sure. Some of the event winners so far Fadoor Holtz, Adrian Matteos, Dimatar Danchev, Puna Punstrie. But the event that Dan Smith won an event as well. The event I want to talk about is this this main event of THEIRS, which is one hundred K tournament. I mean this thing two hundred and sixteen entries. I mean that blows anti hundred k out of the water, like WSP, WPT, PGT, what whatever one hundred k you throw at me. This is the biggest by far, by far. I mean it's out of control. I mean, what are what are they doing over there? What are they put in the water? Man? I don't know. I mean we all know why they have such huge numbers as people playing these events that don't really play anything else. You know, they stay in Asia and all they want to do is gamble four times a year and at these four trying stops they come and they fire, and that brings the value for you know, Americans and Canadians and Australians and anywhere from around the world coming to play at play buyings that they would not normally play. Fields are a little softer. Therefore these guys are jumping in and they just get incredibly large, and it's it's it's kind of staggering to just watch from Afar and to see these numbers climbing. Yeah, I'm kind of wondering where where the top is for this, you know, like I don't know in a way, like I kind of look at Triton like Bitcoin, like it just keeps going up, but like is the top seventy three. K Well, if is this the top and like they're going to start pulling back or is like whatever the next stop is. I don't even know what the next stop is. So for you try and rides on the back of bitcoin, so keeps going when Chin and keeps going. Yeah, but I mean that could also break. That's not Yes, is the next hundred cave main events they have going to have two hundred and forty entries or is it like, is this the top and they're going to start to pull back? I mean I think the next stop is Montenegro, so just a considerably more expensive place. So I don't know if that's going to care No, but I think it matters. You know, there's a lot of people taking shots in these like you you saw the names on Pocus Steake. You know, a lot of our David Coleman, Matas Symbolas, Jesse Lonez. You know these players that are traveling for like the first time or definitely playing outside of their normal buy and range. You know, they went to Jju, they knew what to expect there, but Montenegro is maybe different. Maybe not all of the people that are based in Asia will travel there obviously a majority will but maybe not all of them. So therefore it's not as soft as as the Jaju one, so maybe you see slightly less numbers. Yeah, I mean, these these tournaments are just as I said, they're bananas. I mean I talked about this hundred k, twenty one point six million dollar prize pool. Roman Haravic was the winner for four million, three hundred and thirty thousand. Everyone's favorite older blaster Jean Noel Threll JNT took second place for almost two point nine million. Elton Sang got third, Patrick Antonius fourth, Tias Ebinger fifth. So, I mean, it's just crazy. The Triton stops are just absolutely out of control. I mean, I don't know what to say. I mean, it's wild, like in a way, I kind of think like this is what the Onyx Cup was supposed to be back in the day. I remember the full till Onyx Cup like it was before It's time, the whole online poker stuff like all that sort of stuff like you know, caused it ultimately not to work out. Triton is just I mean, it's just crushing it. It's just absolutely crushing it with this with this series, I Also, I really like what Trayton does in terms of like only having a few stops a year, like really not really not worried too much about expanding to like eight, ten, twelve stops a year. You know, like it it would be it would be easy, you know, to be like, these are great, let's do more of them, right, I mean, that would be obvious. But I also think that, you know, that can lead to maybe watering it down a little bit. And because there are only a handful of them every single year, that a lot of players kind of put all their eggs in one basket, so to speak. They're like, Okay, I'm going to kind of save up I've been doing well whatever. I'm going to take my shot in JJU. I'm going to take my shot in Montenegor. I'm going to take my shot here, my shot there, you know, and I'm going to put a lot on the line and if it works out, great, If it doesn't, okay, fine, But but yeah, I mean, if you just have like too many of these, it can just I mean, the too many at these buy ins, Like how long these series are? I mean, this series and JJU started on March fifth, and it's going to end on March twenty first. You know, so that's more than two weeks of massive, massive buyings. So like normally, normally these events are on the series, sorry are only two weeks, but this one, even two weeks at these price points is insane. Yeah, I mean it's like, how much money are you spending here? This is a couple of big Quinn, Yeah, exactly, a couple of big I mean it's just wild. So but yeah, the tread and stuff is just wild. Every time I feel like they've that they can't go any higher, that they go higher, like it is basically what I'm getting at here. So I think it's really good for the poker community overall. You know, seeing a lot of these players out there battling people taking shots. It was good to see Jesse Lonis head on over there. And yeah, still waiting for that time when Dan and Legranduo heads one over there. I know he's talked about it, how he wants to go. He's on the fence of a try and stop. And I'm always kind of wondering if they're ever going to make their way this way in the world now, not to the States, but somewhere in the Caribbean you know something like that, like, could they do it? I don't know. I mean, I know a lot of places have gone there for some other big buy and stuff. I remember, like the WPT had some ALF eight and whatnot, So could you do that sort of thing? I mean, I'm assuming that could be kind of in the cards. But but yeah, I Triton is just out of control in a good way, of course. So so all right, I got nothing else to talk about. Man, we talked too long about the twenty five K fantasy for no reason. I mean, we care about it because it's fun and I'm the defending champ. And and just if someone gets that that twin five k free roll from Daniel, just send us. Just send us the one percent free roll for the idea, send us the one percent. Wow. I don't know, man, that's a lot for a free roll. I don't know about that one, but hey, who knows? Who knows? All right, that's gonna do it for us. My name is Donnie Peters. His name is Tim Duckworth. We'll probably come to you guys after PLO series is wrapped up. I feel like I've been over promising under delivering, So now I'm going to under promise and hopefully over deliver. That's the plan here doing doing kind of what Daniel is doing in terms of the quality over quantity approach, but with the content stuff. That's what I'm trying to go for here. Okay, but you know, it feels like we're gonna be at the World Series of Poker before we know it. So as far as Tim and I are concerned, we better get ready to be podcasting every single day because that's what we're gonna need to do. God, God, wait, I absolutely cannot wait for the summer to come around. But in between now and then, we have a whole lot of stuff coming and it starts on Wednesday with the PGT PLO series. Hope that you guys will join us both to follow the live reporting over on PGT dot com and also on poker Grow and the poker Grow YouTube channel for the live streams. All right, that's gonna do it for us. We will talk to you guys next time. Peace. Jenny Express