Hello, everyone, Welcome back to a new episode of the Poker Go Podcast. It is Sunday, May thirty first, I'm getting this one in just before the clock turns over and we are in June. It is eleven fifty one pm. Just wrapped up another day down at Paris Slash Horseshoe for the twenty twenty six World Series of Poker. There were seven tournaments running today. Seven. The place is as alive as it has been this summer and it is freaking awesome. We'll hit on a bunch of those tournaments that happen, might not touch on every single one, but you know, we'll do our best. Of course, some big news that went down today. A million dollar bounty was pulled down at Believe. That was pulled at Horseshoe is where they were doing day two of the Mini Mystery Millions. There were some other big bounties pulled as well. A couple two hundred and fifty k ones, a few one hundred k ones we got. The twenty five K Heads Up Championship is working its way down to the final four now. At time of recording, there are still eight players remaining. They are playing out the final round right now. I'm sorry, guys, I'm not waiting up till this ends. I don't know when it's gonna end, so we're doing this on the fly. If anything comes across my desk, i'll talk about it as if it's happening now, that's fine, But if not, I'm just gonna basically touch on who the final eight are and then we'll go from there to set up what will be the final day on Monday. And then Nick Shulman, the Goat, as some may say, was denied gold bracelet number eight. We'll talk about that one throughout this podcast as well. And then I got a little bit of a take here, at least I want to throw my take into the ring after a question that recently came up on the WSP Countdown Show. And then speaking of that WSP Countdown Show, which is what it is officially called, as we learned when I spoke with Jeff Platt on the last episode of the podcast, if you didn't listen to that episode, I just want to remind you go back and listen to it. A little special edition podcast drop. It was just Jeff and I talking about the new era for the World Series of Poker, the new Grand arena that the final tables and the feature tables are being played at, plans for the coverage, the streaming, all that sort of stuff. Jeff is a good friend of mine and we had a really good chat that was taking that took place on the last episode. If you are listening to this podcast, please please, pa, please do me a favor. Come on, hit the favorite button, leave a review, like subscribe, do whatever you gotta do. Tell your friends, tell your family. I'm going to tell you guys this on probably every episode, so just do it please. It really does help us grow. And I really want you guys to send in some questions, some comments, your own takes and thoughts on the twenty twenty six dobs ap to email podcasts at PokerGO dot com and I'll see, if you know, if they're good enough. Even if they're not. If I want to make funny whatever, I'll likely read it on air and then listen. I've been getting a lot of questions about Tim. About Tim Duckworth. Doucky, my guy who was on the podcast before, is not on the podcast. Now here's the deal. I fired it, just kidding. The real deal is that Tim has a different role this summer, he is working directly with the production team. He's basically a table liaison. He did a lot of that in recent years with our team, but as this summer is a much more scaled up offering of what's going on, and we are handling the production side in partnership with the WSP and in partnership with Gigi Poger, it's just a lot heavier lift. Like, for example, tonight, he's going to be doing the table liaison stuff. I don't know till maybe two or three am, who the heck knows. So his schedule doesn't really jive with the podcast, at least for right now. So there's obviously a chance he comes back on when that schedule shifts back to more of a normal thing, But at least for these early days here, he's been handling that twenty five K heads up, which has been running pretty late every night so far. So yeah, listen, I'll do my best to do it myself, and I really love doing it. So you know, if it was a choice between I can either do it myself on a lot of the days or people aren't getting a podcast, I'm choosing to do it myself. Okay, So that's why I'm here bringing you guys the podcast again, hopefully every single day that we can. As we go, you know, I will continue to work in some good interviews. I just talked about the show that I did with Jeff Platt talking with him. We had Daniel Gebba a winner interview from him. We had a special interview that I did with Nick Palmer as well. Both of those were two episodes ago, so go check those out as well, and we'll carry on throughout the summer as best we can. I don't know what's going to happen on days when I play. I do plan on playing eight events, the first of which is coming up on Tuesday. I'm going to hop into this. I don't even know really what it's called, the ws AP Circuit Championship. I guess I don't know. I should get the I should get the actual name of this tournament. The name of it, PERWSP dot com, is the nola At Hold Them US WSP Circuit Championship. I don't really know what that means. I don't think it's anything special other than a branded way to help promote the WA Circuit. But I'll be in there fire on that one. It starts on Tuesday. You are allowed three bullets max. One entry plus two re entries. I am bringing all three shells ready to blast off. Let's freaking go. Hopefully I can still pod and do it extremely late at night and I'll just be running deep. You know. That would be great, That would be the dream. A new season of High Stakes Poker is streaming right now on poker Go. Just head to pokerg dot com or download the app on your favorite device and watch legends go to work. Legends such as Kevin Hart, Andrew Robol, Allan Keating, Sam Keekey's in the game, Doug Polk. The season is out there, Jennifer Tilley, all the greats are in action. Use promo code HSP sixteen for thirty dollars off the first year of a new annual plan. And if you're looking to play some free online poker yourself, then check out play poker Go. That is where you can play the special high Stakes Poker themed tables and if you if you visit play poker go dot com slash podcast during the summer, you can claim a free one hundred k in gold to get yourself off to a nice boosted start. All right, first, thing up for the news of the day. We got Nick Shulman, the man, the myth, the legend, the goat, was denied his eighth w Soop gold bracelet. He finished second in the fifteen hundred dollars badoogie event from a field of five hundred and fifty four entries. Shulman collected ninety four thousand dollars in prize money. But I don't think it's really about the prize money for him in a tournament like this, It's more about getting number eight, getting another piece of WASP hardware, more legacy, all that sort of stuff that goes with the great Nick Shulman. The winner Michael Cassella won it for one hundred and forty one thousand dollars. It was his first World Series of Poker Gold bracelets. These two battled a long ass time. I think heads up play lasted three to four hours. Shulman did have the lead at one point, but then he ultimately got short. But when he got short, it was like every time that Shulman was all in, he just kept doubling up, kept doubling up, kept doubling up. But then you know, after a couple hours of that Shulman just couldn't hold on any longer. He was ultimately overcome by Cassella. Scott sever finished third in that one. But I know a lot of people out there were rooting and were sweating the action and hoping that that Nick Shelman would get number eight. A lot of actually a lot of big names stop by to hang out on the rail. You had Eric Washerson, Jason Mercier, Matthew Wantman, Jean Barbart Baland came over many times, was saying, you got this, Nikki, you got this Nikki likely, you know, verbally cheering his man on. Frank Brannon was there on the rail. You know, people just kind of Darius Martino stopped by at one point, so you know, people were come by, they were really they're really sweat and Nick hoping that he could get number eight, but ultimately fell short. That said, a second place finished ninety four k is still a very good result, especially this early in the summer, and Nick's gonna have plenty of opportunities to go out there and get his eighth WSP Gold bracelet. If he were to win it, he would join You got Michael Mzrocky, Benny Glauser and Sean deeb they all have eight. Ahead of them, you got Johnny Moss's got nine. Then there's three players with exactly ten. Eric Saidel, Johnny Chan and Doyle Brunson. Phil Ivy has got eleven, and then of course Phil Hellmuth has seventeen. So all of those players have reached at least eight gold bracelets, if not more, tied at seven alongside Nick Shulman. Third place finisher Scott sever in this event, sever was also going for his eighth WSFP gold bracelet. Brian Rast has seven and the win or men the win. I was gonna say men the master, but then I wanted to leave out the master, and then I got tripped up. Men win as seven, uh d n Eggs Daniel and Legrand who also has seven, John Hennigan with seven, Billy Baxter with seven, and Josh Aria also got seven. So a lot of players there, a lot of really good players could have a really really good opportunity to get to get to number eight, and heck, maybe even more. I mean a couple of summers ago Scots he was out there winning three goal braces. Day two of the WSP Mini Mystery Millions took place Today, twenty thousand, four hundred and eighty eight entries were tallied in this tournament, total six starting flights to get there. That makes this tournament the twenty twenty six Mini Mystery Millions the sixth largest live poker tournament of all time. It moves ahead of the twenty twenty two WASP Housewarming event that had twenty thousand and eighty entries, and then it slotted just behind the twenty twenty four Gladiators of Poker also ASP event. That event had twenty thousand, six hundred and forty seven entries, so booming field in that one did think it would get up over twenty thousand entries, and it did. Today was Bounty Day when they announced the bounties. You had a one million dollar bounty up for grabs. You had two two hundred and fifty thousand dollars bounties up for grabs, and then you had four one hundred thousand dollars bounties up for grabs. Of course, there was a slew of other bounties, but those were the biggest in the Treasure test and Andrew Shelton was the man who pulled the million dollar bounty and it was pretty wild. What happened to him when he pulled it. So I was reading through the story on Andrew Selton Shelton pulling the million dollar bounty over on pokernews dot com, and he said, when I drew the gold chest, I was under the gun. So I said, I'd play my button and then go up after that, because if the screen populates that he'd get a gold chest, you get to go up and actually draw out of the chest. Shelton continues, But on my button, I got ace king in against pocket aids to bust so Shelton. Shelton says, okay, I'm gonna play my button, then I'll go up. He plays his button and busts on his button. Then he goes up and it's a million dollar pull. He went wild. He was screaming, he was yelling, he was celebrating and jumping up and down. The emotion, the reaction you love to see when you turn a five hundred and fifty dollars buying into a million dollar bounty pull, absolutely incredible stuff. Shelton finished in one hundred and second place in the tournament for thirty three hundred and fifty dollars, so you know he good cash there. Obviously good run hundred and second out of twenty thousand and four hundred and eighty eight entries, but then pulling that seven figure bounty just absolutely freaking insane stuff. You had Jacob Long and Adidia Sisla pulling two hundred and fifty thousand dollars bounties each. I don't really understand this, but those bounties were actually two hundred and fifty thousand, three hundred dollars. I don't get that, but that's what they were worth. And then you had Christopher George Cartek, Ved, Peter Lee, and Hunter Payne. Those four players each pulled one hundred thousand dollars bounties. First place in this event is still up for grabs as well, four hundred thousand dollars up top again five hundred and fifty dollars buying in this Mini Mystery million tournament. I believe I saw. I just did a quick scan of the chip guns. I'm not gonna look through him, you know, too crazy right now, But I did see Mike Leah was stilling. I mean, he's probably gonna win with the way that that guy performs in big field Pobra tournament. So that tournament I believe, is set to finish on Monday, so stay tuned for some more news from the Mini Mystery Millions. The twenty five K heads up is down to the final eight. Sixteen players returned for day two, then the final eight are. These are the matches that are happening right now as I record, you got Bowding up against Dimitar dan Chev. You got Carrie Katz playing Ryuta Nakai, you got Henry Pustinen playing Nikita KU's nets off, and Thomas Boyvaan is taking on Alex Fox and they are all up. On the main stage, those final eight players have locked up one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. A min cash was worth sixty K. Then they got one hundred and fifty thousand. I believe it was our sixty k if I remember correctly. If not shoot me, but whatever, the final aid are getting one hundred and fifty thousand, and there's an eight hundred thousand dollars first place prize up for grabs. This is a PGT qualifying event, so there will be some implications for the PGT leaderboard that eight hundred thousand dollars first place prize that translates to four hundred and eighty PGT points. So you know, as we go out throughout the summer, there are thirty one PGT qualifying events. We are Poker gro we do have the Poker Grow Tour. So yes, I'm going to talk about it and we'll see how that leaderboard starts to get adjusted and moved around as we go on the BSIP Countdown show, not the one that was done today, but the previous one. There was a question that came up. They always do kind of hot topics or questions and then all the panelists, you know, give their points and debate and all that sort of stuff. But the question was asked if heads up poker is the purest form of poker, And I know that that's often thrown around. I know that that's often thought about. You know, some people say the purest form of poker is Nolanman hold them. Some people say the purest form of poker is nolantdo seventh single draw. Some say it's specifically heads up poker when it comes to Nola A hold them. So that's what this question was centered around, and after giving it some thought, here's where I land, and I'm gonna apologize ahead of time for what is essentially going to be some fence straddling here. Now, the case for heads up being the purest form of poker is, you know, there are a couple of things working in the favor of that. That's going to be your argument. There's nowhere to hide, right you're sitting there. You got to play basically every hand. I mean, you don't have to play every hand, but if you don't play nearly every hand, you're going to get absolutely steamrolled. In heads up poker, every decision that you make, every hand that you play, every street that you play, every bet that you make, all that sort of stuff, all those decisions they are only against one opponent, which I think just magnifies the scope of everything. Because when you're constantly doing the same thing over and over again, and in the case of heads of poker, you're constantly planning aainst the same opponent repeatedly, you know, those patterns start to build, and then there's a lot of you know, adjusting to the patterns, pattern recognition, metagame, all that sort of stuff. So adjustments and counter adjustments matter more than table dynamics in a heads up format. Positional battles, you know, hand reading, timing of things. You know, this is a big stack over here, he's just attacking the little stacks over here. He's got a certain position at the table. There's there's all those different elements when you're playing more than just heads up. You know, six handed, full ring, whatever it may be. All that sort of stuff is very much amplified when it's just one on one. You're under the microscope every single hand. Now, what I just said is is you know that's kind of the that's the case for heads up poker being the purest form. Now where I think it starts to break down a little bit, and I don't think it fully breaks down, But there's a volume argument that comes into play specifically with heads up poker tournaments because listen, when you play heads up cash, and specifically when you play heads up cash games online, you know that is where you can get in tens of thousands of hands. You know you can play if you're playing heads up cash online, you know you can play one opponent or across multiple tables for a lengthy period of time, and next thing you know, you're playing multiple thousands, if not tens of thousands of hands against a singular opponent, So the card distribution and the edges that are present from either player, you know, that all becomes to become much more, you know, apparent it just it just becomes fine tuned quite a bit more. Again, this, I know this is a little bit of fence straddling here because I just made the case for why heads of poker can be the purest form. But now I'm like, well, heads up tournament poker, I don't know if it can be just due to the time and volume constraints. Now, if you want to do a heads of poker tournament that last two weeks, Okay, I get it, Like that's a different animal, right, but you can't do that. It's just not possible. Most heads up poker tournaments are done in two or three days, if not one day, if you're playing you know something that's a little bit smaller buying or whatever. So you know, heads up poker, yes, it can be the purest form of poker because every decision is magnified and there's nowhere to hide. But a heads up poker tournament isn't necessarily the purest test of skill because the sample sizes just ultimately are too small. So the purer that the format becomes strategically, the more volume you need to accurately identify, you know, who's ultimately the better player or who has the bigger edge, and then that edge applied over an extended period of time is likely going to you know, normalize a bit more. So, yes, I don't think there's any argument that heads up poker is an extremely pure form of the game. But when it comes to heads up tournaments, when you are constrained by time, when you are constrained by getting to a very very large volume, you know, it's not necessarily the best measure of this being the purest form of poker. So yes, that is some fence straddling. But I've been thinking about this for a day and a half and that's where I settled on this, on the question of you know, is heads up poker the purest form of poker? So the answer is yes, but you know, yes because of this reason. But this is also where it starts to break down a little bit. It's the biggest PLO summer on record, and that includes PLO Masterminds, a big summer sale. Now through July fourteenth, you can save twenty percent on six month memberships or take twenty percent off all courses. Just head to plomastermind dot com slash poker, go choose your plan or your course and start learning how to win with PLO Mastermind. It's time to stop guessing and start winning. All right, Now that I got my heads up, take out of the way, let's just bounce around quickly to what's going on elsewhere around the World Series of Poker. You got Phil Hellmuth, the one and only, is pushing for gold bracelet number eighteen. I mentioned earlier that he's one of those players who has at least eight WSFP gold races. He's the way the hell up there was seventeen. He's chasing number eighteen, and he is down to the final couple of tables in the ten thousand dollars buy in Omaha High Low tournament. Last I looked about fifteen or twenty minutes ago, Helmuth had a top two stack. He was behind just Scott Clements. Now, of course, chips can fluctuate quite fast in tournaments, but he looks like he's been going strong. With the way that Phil Helmuth plays, the style that he enacts in these tournaments, he's always a very, very very tough one to kill, so if he has a lot of chips, I can only imagine this is really setting itself up for a final table run. I don't know what the streaming plans are for Monday, but I would say that if helm Youth is in line for number eighteen, better turn them dem cameras on because the hell of a lot of people are gonna be watching and wanting to watch Phil hemm Youth go for number eighteen. And even if he doesn't, you know, Phil helm Youth on a stream, it's always just pure entertainment, right, especially in a game like like Omaha Hi Low, where I'm sure he's gonna have a few choice words his own thoughts, and I'm sure that will come out with how his opponents are playing, you know, especially if he starts starts taking some beats. You got Scott Clements in the mix, still, you got James Ops, Rob Misrocki, Josh Aria, they were all still in with a couple of tables left. At time of recording. I think it's four hundred and fifty thousand dollars up top in that one, in the six hundred dollars deep stack that kicked off today. Quite a weekend if you if you got into the the last flight of the five hundred and fifty Mini Mystery Millions. Maybe that worked out, maybe it didn't. But then today, you know, you got the six hundred dollars Deep Stack starting tomorrow or sorry, on Monday kicks off the fifteen hundred dollars Nolman hold Them six Max. And then on Tuesday you got that seventeen hundred dollars Doubsipy Circuit Championship event. So a nice little string here for the lower buying Nolan at Holden players. But in this six hundred dollars deep stack, four thy six hundred and twenty two entries, goodfield, big number, but it is down twenty five percent from last year. Last year this event, same event number, event number ten had six thousand and ninety entries. So a bit of a downtick there, but we have seen several downticks across the board. I think it's just par for the course, you know, And it's not just the Doubsip events. You're you're seeing numbers that are not that they're necessarily down a ton or missing guarantees is what I really should say, because you know, other venues do a lot of guarantees, but it's more like they're kind of like just making guarantees, which when you're operator and you're sweating a guarantee never you don't want to just make it, you know. I know I always say that, like you should fall within a little bit of a guarantee, a little bit over. That means you set a good guarantee that was hard to attain. But I think operators always love to smash it. That's always the phrase, guarantee, smash guarantee crushed on you know, day two or whatever. But it makes them sweat a bit. I get it. You know, we had a guarantee it in the Poker gro studio that we had to sweat. I mean, it's not fun to sweat those things. But you know, down there in the six hundred dollars deep stack, the ten k GGI millions kicked off that had around two hundred entries and I when I hit record, they had the clock pause. They must have been playing out the final couple hands of the day and they were right around two hundred entries. The clock said one ninety four. But maybe there was a couple of people that got in because this is unlimited entry and you can register into Day two, so you know it might have been some stuff that wasn't tallied yet. That said, around two hundred entries on day one. A in this ten thousand dollars buy an event takes place on Monday. The survivors from both flights will come back on Tuesday. Ultimately, if I have this correctly four day event. The structure in this one is wild. So you start with one hundred thousand chips and it's one hundred two hundred, so you're starting with five hundred big blinds. Now, in the WSP Main Event, the greatest tournament in the world, you start with sixty k and the blinds are one hundred three hundred big lines, so you have an incredibly deeper start starting stack here in this ten KGG millions. You also have unlimited rantry in this tournament, and then you have max Late registration and you can come in on Tuesday and you can come in with twenty five big lines. That is a ton of big blinds to come with Max Late. So I'm gonna guess that I mean basically between today or between Sunday and Max Late redge on Tuesday, like you can get other tournaments in right so I think a lot of other a lot of people might just wait to max late this thing on Tuesday. Might it might be one of those things where, you know, I think we saw it for sure last year, if not the year before too. But like the max late reg you know, you have fifty sixty. However many people showing up at the end, they got to do like a full tournament rejaw, like that whole thing that kind of delays everything. I think this is gonna be one of those tournaments where you're gonna have a ton of people showing up with twenty five big lines, which is a lot to work with. You know, normally you come in max lay, you're working with I don't know, twelve and a half bigs, fifteen bigs whatever, I mean, twenty five that's a reasonable stack. You can actually play a bunch of hands and play them to the river. So that's gonna be something something to consider. And then we'll see how how Day one B of that tournament goes. Obviously we always expect starting flights to increase as you go deeper into the structure, but we'll see. You know, we already have one tournament earlier that did dip from Day one B to Day one A. But obviously that that shot up right after that. I would expect, let's say, three hundred to three point fifty on Day one B. That's gonna be my guess. So get up over five hundred for this tournament. I don't know. Well, you know, we'll see this is this is an interesting tournament, and we'll see how it goes, right. I mean, there's a lot of heavy hitters. I was walking around the field today a little bit. You know, all the all the big nolemic guys are in there, you know, but I know a lot of people were talking about the structure and how it's almost too good, and that they'll just take advantage of that that late registration and then go play some other things in these two days and go from there. Also, kicking off today, you had the fifteen hundred dollars no limit deuced to seven single jaw. Now this one, you know, we've talked to times about how these numbers are down. This one had a nice boost over last year. So last year they had five hundred and thirty two entries in this tournament. This year six twenty six, that's an eighteen percent increase. That is tremendous to get to get a boost like that in this tournament again fifteen hundred dollars, no limit, deuce to seven singles d all. So that's that's really cool there to see this event get get an up tech tick like this. You know, I think the ten k O eight, by the way, was down a tiny bit. You know, it's very much in line with last year. So you know, some events are holding strong, other events are dipping down. But here, you know, we get a nice uptick from this uh fifteen dollars ducee and well and we'll see, you know, Nolan duce and we'll and we'll see if you know, some other these events start to uptick as we go. You know, I think I think the first couple of days you're coming up Memorial Day weekend, people are still trying to kind of get their bearings. You get a bunch of people still like coming in from trit and all that sort of stuff. So you know, I think I think numbers will still be pretty good carrying through. I was talking with David Baker, her good friend ODB the other day, and he was saying how he's still bullish on the WAD event, which I am still bullish on the wasb min event, you know, and I think I mentioned that with uh in my conversation with Jeff Platt. But I'm just you know, I still think that, Like I don't know, part of me says GG poker slash the wicip is gonna do whatever they can as the summer goes on to cramp more people into that tournament. I don't know. That's how I just feel. I feel like you come out with this like this is your first I know, last year was their first year owning the Dobsip you know, I'm talking about GG Poker. But this year, like you come with this new giant ass arena, like you're doing all this new streaming stuff. You move from the Horseshoe over to Paris for everything. You know, you got one hundred events on the schedule, like it's you know, everything is like okay, let's go, this is our thing. Now we're rocking, we're rolling. Well do you want to couple that with a lower number in the event. I don't think so. So I think they're gonna they're gonna turn the heat up, you know quite a bit. Maybe that means more satellites, Maybe they leverage more stuff on wsp dot com here in the States as we get closer to it. Maybe it's more live satellites, you know. Maybe GG poker is ramping stuff up on their platform for rest of the world. I don't know what it is, but that's just the sense that I get, you know, like I don't think you want to come out and do all this amazing stuff. But then at the end of it, people are only talking about a number when it comes to the douvas main events. Now, I've always said it and I'll say it again. Whether you get seventy five hundred eighty five hundred, eight thousand, nine thousand, ten thousand, eleven thousand, whatever it is, those are insanely big numbers for a ten K freeze out, you know. So yes, those numbers are great. But we all know how the media is and we're always going to be talking about things, and it's like, okay, you know what sort of decline is in poker because the WASIP minivent is this big barometer for the entire industry, and I just think it's it's kind of hard with how everything is. One. You got the taxing, the ninety percent rule that sucks. I hate it. I hopefully it gets you know, reverted, but you know, what can you do right now? It's there, right and people are you know, worry about it, and they're concerned about it, so you got that. Another thing is it's just freaking expensive. And I don't think a lot of people have a lot of money. I mean, it's just it's just the nature of the world. Everything is going up, up, up, up up, Yet you know, salaries and all that sort of stuff aren't really you know, following at the same pace, so it's hard. Maybe people just have a little bit less money to throw around when it comes to pover that said, if you are going to throw money around, it's going into the waspre main event as far as I'm concerned. So I am still bullish on the ubas main event. I am still sticking with my prediction that it gets back up over ten thousand entries. That is my prediction, and I'm sticking with it until I tell you guys that I'm not. So let's gobs to be main event. And with that, I got nothing else to talk about. I'm sure you guys in stick are tired of me, but again, you know, I do want to hear your thoughts. I love hearing questions from you, guys. I love hearing takes from you guys. I love hearing if you want to debate me, if you want to argue with me, if you think I'm right, if you think I'm wrong, whatever it may be. Maybe there's some stories out there that are developing that you guys know about that I don't know about. If there's any of that podcast At pokergroat dot com, I get in the inbox every single day. I look for stuff, so please hit me up through there. I love engaging with the fans. I've met a couple of you at Paris or Horseshoe this summer, and I hope to meet many more of you. So that's that. That's gonna do it for this episode of the Poker Girl Podcast. My name is Donny Peters. It was a pleasure as always, and now we'll talk to you guys next time. Oh