BET RAISE FOLD: The Story of Online Poker FULL MOVIE - Online Poker Documentary

so [Music] the average public anyways i don't think probably understands what this means for like thousands and thousands of poker players you know this was my livelihood and it wasn't just a game you know like it seems like it's just a bad dream i don't wake up from there's just a lot of people in a panic there's some people on the poker forums and stuff with like 95 of their network like wrapped up in these online sites and right now it's in limbo like we're all hoping that we're gonna get our money back and we'd like to be optimistic but really we don't know you know [Music] when i found out sitting around on a computer playing cards for a living was something you could actually do i was like that's it that's that's what i'm gonna do with my life it's a very like interesting game when you think about it like what would you do to prevent me from winning all your money i never in a million years would have ever expected a girl can be a professional online poker player i would have said it was more likely that i would grow to be an astronaut i think poker teaches you to evaluate on the fly it's always up in the air you can't say for sure it's ephemeral and you can't grasp it you're almost outside yourself a bit in a good way when you're just making these complex decisions within the structure of this game you're head-to-head with your opponent and it's whose mental brain power is gonna like outwit the other one you're kind of like trying to get into their head and read their mind and the better you can do that the the better you're gonna be you try and make the best decision you can and leave everything else up to fate or destiny or whatever you want to call it and so every day has a little bit of mystery going into it i play poker because i love poker because i'm good at poker i worked my way up through like the bottom and i'm really proud of where i like have ended up poker's definitely given me the opportunity to live life outside of the conventional system it's given me the opportunity to allow myself to be happy everything that i have in my life is the result of my first 75 deposit in an online poker site poker is not just a game it's so wrapped up in every other aspect of my life that it's like kind of become a part of my identity [Music] poker is one of the three really quintessentially american games it came over here probably in the 1810s as a french game poke but really became americanized and really came to define how americans gamble poker is a game that really embodies what this culture is all about everyone starts with the background that they've had the experiences they've had the knowledge they've had the skills they have and they sit down and play a game america is all about the independent spirit just listen to any politician all they want to talk about is freedom you know in individual liberty and choices well that's what poker gives you there is some luck but by and large those who have the most skill the most knowledge the most experienced in some cases are the ones who are going to go the furthest and win the most that's the way it is in poker and that's the way it is in life [Music] a lot of people thought that people wouldn't be willing to play poker online because players had no way of knowing whether there was collusion going on or whether any of it was real you know and they said why would people do that the big question with a lot of online operators and certainly those of us industry were would this thing last is this something that's going to be around five ten years from now and if it's around how big will it be certainly chris moneymaker in 2003 changes everything [Music] everybody's dream is to win the big tournament it's just the pinnacle of poker and there can only be one a year hellmuth wins the championship this is the tournament that everybody waits an entire year for we did it man during the 1980s the tournament actually had very flat numbers it didn't grow the 2003 world series of poker main event that's the breaking point the list of entrants 839 players long the most ever here at binions and they have actually had to employ a downstairs poker room to hold the overflow they had tables that were actually half inside binions and half outside on fremont street there was just so many people there and it was like oh my where did everyone come from this huge increase of players was primarily a result of the explosion of online satellites one more man i have to mention before we get underway at our featured table his name is chris moneymaker he won his way into this tournament by winning a 40 entry fee internet tournament he was an amateur he was an accountant by trade and played poker recreationally just a regular guy and accounting for a restaurant chain here with the big boys that was the appeal for spectators at home because we could relate to a gala chris money maker chris moneymaker knocks another big player out of the tournament he's the guy that you work with he's your next door neighbor he's your cousin he's your brother [Applause] great to have some fun have some fun [Music] the chris moneymaker sam farhad matchup is your classic david vs goliath you have your underdog chris money maker taking on the proverbial las vegas shark sami has the edge he's a high action experience player and let's face this kid is playing for a big prize for the first time in his life it's a lot of money a lot of pressure that's why you're here in sports when you go to the championship game the first time you get there you usually don't win i've gotta go all in let's go i'll call sam farho goes all in and chris money maker is going to call it and with two pair chris moneymaker a statistical and probability to win this title at the outset is now closing in on making it an incredible reality [Applause] and the 27 year old has stepped out of the virtual poker room and in a very swift and unlikely manner is atop the poker world when people saw that it became somewhat of an american dream where wow the guy's name is money maker he just turned 40 bucks into two and a half million dollars i want that to be me suddenly everybody in the country whether they live close to a casino or not said hey i didn't even know polka was available online all these elements came together to make the perfect storm and only poker just exploded that was the thing in the past if you weren't from like vegas la atlantic city a couple other spots you basically couldn't be a great poker player and that's really the reason that online poker has done so much because it made it possible for anyone anywhere to become potentially the greatest poker player in the world that's the money maker effect [Music] [Music] new mom's a town of about 13 000 people in southern minnesota it's a pretty traditional conservative town [Music] it is definitely not common to be a professional poker player in new orleans as far as i know i'm the only one [Music] i discovered poker through my husband corey him and his buddies were always playing in college and at first i like didn't want to learn at all because i don't like learning new games but eventually i joined in and i just kind of had like a natural talent for the game and i just started winning all the time she just got good at it it was pretty quick that she was certainly elevated to the top of our friendly little game that wasn't very competitive but i thought it was just one of these bad things you know kids go through and but at that time that she was still in college and then all of a sudden i find after a fact that well she took a few semesters off to gamble i specifically remember corey and i having a conversation and we were like really excited because we were thinking that like it was maybe a possibility that i could make 100 extra dollars a month and we were just talking about like what an impact that would have on our life i was really surprised when she got her laptop out here one day and she was playing and she had like four different games going at the same time you know and that and then then i think i realized that wow she's got something going on here i never in a million years imagined that it would like continue to go and progress to where it has now look at this it's a bowl of fruit it's a bowl of fruit it is okay so are those grapes yeah and that and that's a blueberry oh and this must be a banana and that's the apple what's the green thing uh that's a spoon poker allows me freedom that other people just don't have through their jobs i have friends who are tied down to like nine to five jobs and they they have to miss events in their life that would be important to them because they have a job that requires them to be there and poker allows me to be my own boss really i don't have to miss any of life's big events i i've thus far been very very blessed and i've been able to be there for all of them and that's something that just holds a ton of value to me you think that's the freedom that poker allows me to have is just priceless [Music] nice catch on dude you're gonna eat it [Music] [Music] i've always pretty much had some game that i'm playing before i started playing poker my my main obsession was starcraft star traffic is really really fun i'm from australia so i remember waking up at like four in the morning and play us players uh on dial-up which was pretty pretty frustrating because everyone had broadband but uh i i noticed in the starcraft community there was there was kind of a lot of chatter about online poker and a lot of the the better players at starcraft were kind of fooling around or it seemed like they were fooling around with poker uh someone like in tillerman or like uh elky yeah they they were kind of playing the highest games on pokerstars which seemed ridiculous because they had kind of just jumped into this with a year of experience so so that kind of led me to initially playing poker at first it felt kind of boring and slow you know you get dealt hands it's not like a real-time strategy game where you're like but once once those kind of aesthetics fade away and you start dealing with the human element then then the kind of richness of the game becomes apparent [Music] it's a kind of tricky process learning something that you really have no idea about with no kind of support group helping you learn yeah you're just kind of like swimming into the tide hoping that you'll get to some island eventually and just kind of having the faith that you will so in my second year of university poker started to take over and at some point something had to give one day i guess i just woke up and it was was the university [Music] by the time i got to germany i remember distinctly sending my brother an email saying like you know i'm through taking this as kind of like a middle range thing like i want to play the biggest games all day every day and for the next couple years pretty much all my ambitions were related to success at poker and everything kind of everything else fell to the sidelines became less important [Music] i never mind bringing the jacket in just a dash in the back to make it give it sort of more that yeah we do we definitely have to clean up the back a little we're going to race collar here and we're going to take it in just a tad just to give you more of a silhouette sure throughout high school i was definitely attracted to the bond or gq lifestyle that i had seen in so many magazines and movies and i wanted to grow up and and live that lifestyle to be able to travel the world you know be dressed to the nines at all time be able to pick up girls with ease have a bunch of really cool friends who would connect me to stuff going on you know in whatever city i was visiting so that was always kind of that was the dream for me instead of owning a bunch of things it was having a bunch of experiences this is amazing man with the brown shoes i love it can you go ahead and mark them alex when i was 19 i won a package on party poker while playing in my dorm that gave me an entry and trip and hotel to a tournament down in australia oh there we go so i went down there for 10 days made some money in the tournaments we fell in love with the place decided i would go back for study abroad so six months later i moved back there i would say it was probably the happiest period of my life it was just you know online poker every day hanging out with friends every evening taking days off to go golfing or play tennis or go drinking with my friends so i just kind of had like a very happy balanced life where i was able to do a little of everything that i wanted all right that's suit number one let's go for suit number two and it was my intention to stay down there but unfortunately i was not able to acquire permanent residency so i needed a new place to live in the u.s on very short notice which is why i now live in a pool house in my friend's backyard hey guys what's up how you doing come on in [Music] i'm living here in las vegas in the home of my friend andrew lucky chewie lichtenberger he bought this house after he had a really good 2009 world series of poker and i moved into the pool house in spring 2010 this is dan smith aka what up what's happening uh and like mad dog watson i'm kind of living in a sort of a frat house scenario of poker players there's not really any rules to the house it's just a bunch of young dudes living together but you know this time they actually have some money [Music] i love living here if i had to leave melbourne for somewhere i'm glad it was a nice house in las vegas with all my buddies who are better at poker than i am [Applause] what do we have you have a hundred because i won the first game and then you want two in a row so then what am i up i'm i've been betting a hundred dollars so you are up a hundred on me i'm over honda okay i'm willing to make all my money okay the biggest difference that the money online poker provided me in life was a real direction for what i wanted to do in my life i was a theater major in college and i didn't really care about it and i didn't want to do it and i knew that i wanted something that allowed me a large degree of autonomy but would hopefully make me a fairly wealthy guy and that was exactly online poker plus it allowed me the freedom to be whatever kind of person i wanted to be and hang out with whoever i wanted so long as you could go home log on and play well enough to win everything else you did was to your discretion [Applause] sorry yeah if there are two storms of the modern era in poker they are as follows chris moneymaker in 2003 winning the world series of poker and the other storm mike sexton party poker the world poker tour hi everyone welcome to the world poker tour we are coming to you aboard holland america's ms ryan dam home of the largest floating poker game in history i'm mike sexton and i'm vince van patten and this is the party poker million the wpt was the first really to try to sell poker as like a tour and a sport the river is the same gus hanson has won this tournament i don't think it's hyperbole to say it was a phenomenon people who would have never thought to watch poker on tv or really even played it that much were just kind of captivated by it it didn't take long to realize something had happened here something great it was hitting the viewing public in a way that it really just absolutely resonated [Applause] no one never seen anything like it you go turn on every single week on wednesday nights watch this tournament watching all these exciting people and all of a sudden there's a commercial break hey wait a minute that's the host that's mike sexton he was telling us about the hand and now he's like what's that thing called party what party poker what's that let me check that out the party poker ads made sure that when people opened their first online poker account it was going to be with party poker so the site didn't just grow it exploded within 30 days we multiplied our business by 10. we never looked back became the largest site in the world because of television [Music] 03 to o6 was like the party poker era and the birth of modern online poker and the money was just easy i do know that when i was making a lot of money at one point in time i was looking up how to buy an island on ebay i do know that that was a real thing i actually tried to figure out there are islands for sale on ebay or there were at the time i mean it was a gold mine for a while there was just so many games running and just so many recreational players like there was no reason for anybody to even like survey the competition i was really bad back then and i was making so much money because people were just clueless there were so many games you could play so many hands and the games were just that easy i don't know any point in history where young people with little to no education could learn something simple about a game and then just print money at it it just basically provide a lot of people the opportunity for lifetime financial security the very early age with minimal sacrifice [Music] it was such a relief when i started making good money in poker i remember when i first started making a lot of money and i was living on my own in college i had the most well-stocked kitchen and pantry you would ever find in your entire life because when i was growing up getting groceries was like a huge treat and having the cupboards full was something that that happened at my friend's house it didn't happen at my house so that was like kind of a signal of like my financial success was that i always just had a ton of food in the house and going grocery shopping was it's still really exciting to me well we had a situation where both kids we had both of them at that time and we didn't have gas they shut our gas off so we're borrowing borrowing space heaters so we could get it warm enough for the kids in the house so yeah it was bad it was stressful as a kid knowing that your parents are worried about money i always felt like a sense of guilt if i needed something because i felt like it was just going to be an added burden it was definitely a way of growing up that i always knew i didn't want my kids to ever have to feel like that well danny's obviously been doing so well at poker that she's buying laurie a horse that she's always wanted she's always wanted a horse all her life she really um set me up good because we went to look at this at this horse or actually i went to watch her ride and one of the stable people asked me if um if i liked horses and i said oh yeah i'd love horses i'd have 20 of them if i could and danny said well how about just one mom and that's how she told me she was buying me a horse it was really sweet it was really sweet so it took me a while to figure out she wasn't pulling my leg because she's good at that is it okay my mom's just kind of had some rough breaks in life she's just kind of had some struggles that um she's worked hard to get through [Music] she's an amazing woman and she deserves the best so giving her a horse is just something that it would mean a lot to her and it would mean a lot to me thank you for calling poker royalty this is britney how may i direct your call my name is brian ballspaw and i am the founder of a poker talent agency called poker royalty poker royalty is an agency that specializes in the poker industry so we represent the best poker players in the world for sponsorships and licensing and endorsement deals and personal appearances and things like that basically any way they can make money as celebrities away from the poker table no one knew anything really about poker players prior to 2003 and now all of a sudden you're seeing these guys who travel around the world they live this kind of maverick independent lifestyle they're playing pots for hundreds of thousands of dollars they're winning a million and the back stories were so interesting and fantastic that they were almost made up characters you know playing out in real life the idea of poker royalty came to me one day while i was watching poker on television i was watching espn i saw six guys around a poker table and the camera couldn't go anywhere but their hats their shirts none of them had logos on and i knew that you know time on espn was valuable i didn't know who would sponsor them or what the logos could or should be but i knew that there was valuable inventory there that was not being utilized and this is where i got lucky and all poker players got lucky because the online poker sites filled the void they became the primary sponsors the big sponsors the companies that were funding poker and funding it at an unbelievable rate my baseline was kind of the pga tour if a guy goes through pga tour qualifying school gets his card he should expect somewhere between 150 000 and 200 000 a year you know to wear a logo so originally i started asking for that amount of money and we started getting it right away so i started asking for a little bit more money a little bit more money and a little bit more money and before we knew it you know we're doing seven-figure sponsorship deals which blow away the numbers that i was doing in the pga tour and as the boom hit so did my business [Music] welcome back to the world poker tour and don't change that dial folks the wpt came on when i was a senior in high school and the moment i found it that's what i did with my wednesday nights it was on for two hours from like eight to ten i think and that's where i was every wednesday from 8 to 10. it was just a great introduction to poker they explained how the game was played they tried to set up the personalities of the game and i looked up to all these guys i saw on television and thought they just had the most glamorous interesting lifestyle and that if you met them they would be the most fascinating charming hilarious guy possible and that was what i aspired to and looked up to i was such a blatant fanboy during that era that i was looking for any way to get involved just anything to get in contact with poker and be part of that world sean gibson poker news daily here with two of the stalwarts of the poker industry mike sexton vince van patten you guys are here this is like i'm on american idol i mean we're here for the raw deal uh we got people just off the street people flying from all over trying out for this new segment this is a huge opportunity for for just about anyone who loves poker well it really is and we're seeing all kinds of people try out for this role honestly welcome back to the world poker tour this is a brand new segment we like to call the raw deal ship it phil jam these chips should have left skidmarks there and you play like a donkey he hot and you get the prize we engaged in extensive search we had open auditions we had auditions online we're looking for a character that's going to be opposite of us who's not afraid to scream out there what a [ __ ] what an idiot how could this guy ever make it to the final table this was a very risky decision this could have this could have been quite frankly a disaster tell us your name where you're from my name is tony dunst i currently reside in las vegas and i play poker for movie when i saw the audition form for what they were looking for i jumped at the idea because i was like that's me they want a guy to act as i naturally act if i see another professional poker player acting like they're too cool for school i have no qualms about calling them out what they did for the first audition was show you a clip where at a final table at the bay 101 andy seth uh and phil hellmuth get it in blind vs blind with andy seth's ace jack for philharmonies pocket queens [Applause] phil like walks off the table and he like crumbles over into the fetal position and he's just like having a full moment whatever the hell that is so when they did that audition the line i came up with was um i like to think of phil hellmuth as a clown in the literal sense and that he is a man who will behave without dignity for a set fee which i suppose you could also call a scene is that phil was on his knees at the time i'll allow you to make up your own mind and uh you know i felt like that was probably the line that stuck out a little bit that i was going to take some gambles and you know the interview process and say some you know what i felt like was uh the kind of outlandish things they were looking for so the next day they called me while i was in the airport and said we would like to offer you a job so here we are [Music] [Music] i would say my poker dream is to you know someday obtain like a sponsorship it would be nice to have a means to make some income without physically sitting at the table and playing poker and i just think it'd be cool it's just kind of like it's the kid that grows up and wants to be in the nba it would be cool to have a team to identify with that that's just something that i think it would just be a neat experience and something that i'd be really proud of the best way to get sponsored really is to win a big tournament and get some media coverage that way and this year i've decided to play more tournaments in the hopes of getting closer to that sponsorship goal the idea that you know danny might be traveling around more and you know attempting to get sponsorship and to be a personality and poker i i think is is great all right the security that being being sponsored would bring you know i think is pretty valuable folks it's tough to make these wpt final tables phil ivey has done it eight times more than any other player in the world michael and he makes a call i think photo poker would be the best site to be sponsored by um i feel kind of loyal because it's just where i've played most of my career and i think it'd be cool to kind of be on the same team be sponsored by the same site as you know phil ivey [Music] [Applause] [Music] the thing they did hands down better than anybody else at the beginning was marketing full tilts marketing campaign just looked madison avenue [Music] this was play with the pros we are the best it was team full tilt these were the big guys full time poker was essentially founded by howard lever and chris jesus ferguson jesus was the world champion and won the world series the main event power letter was a bracelet winner you know these aren't easy to win yeah they were players players like everyone knew who they were they were definitely the cool kids in school and they they built a team of players that everyone wanted to know about and play against and be like what you think because you dressed like me you could play like me when full tilt started they definitely recognized that ivy was a real star ladies and gentlemen phil id he might not have been number one but he quickly became the number one player in the world i'm joined by man who only needs one name ivy the bigger phil ivey got the bigger full till poker got i feel very flattered when people say uh that i'm the best player these celebrities weren't just endorsing full tilt you know they're part owners so if you wanted to play on a site you felt it was safe because this is where the pros are playing to learn chat and play with the pros go where they live full tiltpoker.com they were massively successful and i know that they believed in their business model ray guitar the ceo of full tiltpoker.net on behalf of fulltimepoker.net i'd like to present this first place check oh no no one knew who ray was before or before he got into poker he was just a day trader living in la and he just happened to be sharing the same space as chris chris ferguson wholesale poker was owned and operated by professional poker players who didn't necessarily have business experience from 10 feet away i can throw a playing card through a carrot but once again they were making money [Music] is fantastic how have you felt so far about your new role in the world here um i feel great about it it's quite a shock and everything i mean it all happened very very quickly for me and you know i've barely been living in this country uh that long and they offered me a job so what's your strategy given the structure of the field the craziness my intention is to get drunk and see where it takes me yeah i'm mike sexton on behalf of myself vince van patten kimberly lansing tony dunst and the royal plush girls we want to welcome you to the most fun event on the world poker tour the wpt invitational [Applause] hello how you doing don right tony nice to meet you hey man good to see you again too it's pretty surreal to be attending this event working for the wpt and mingling with some mainstream celebrities as well as these poker celebrities who you know maybe even months earlier had no idea who i was and now i'm very much a part of the fabric of the poker community hey thank you no sweat it's just weird weird how it works out so do you go to all the um no not yet they've only got me uh contracted for the west coast staff um las vegas and the event in indiana whether that is extended in the following years and they want me all over the states over to europe things like that yet to be seen i guess it kind of depends on how the season goes to the wpt what the reception was like for the segment but i have no experience being a professional at anything i've spent eight years without a responsibility or obligation in the world and you know as much as i appreciate all this and i love the fact that they actually gave me a shot at being a real person again i have no idea what i'm doing [Music] i'm at commerce casino i'm going to play the lapc and the 10k main event i'm late right now i'm like 20 minutes late but that's all right i like showing up late anyways because i don't like being sitting at the table while everybody walks up it nice to meet you i'm danielle you got full tilt pokers just kind of giving me a rake back deal so i just get some extra rake back so it's not a sponsorship but it's just um more so something that i think it's at least developing a relationship with them and hopefully it can lead to something more in the future that would be pretty sweet [Music] [Music] my whole poker career i've pretty much always been in school so i've never really fully given poger my attention and i think i just want to know what i can do obtaining a sponsorship for me is more of like a confirmation of my achievements it's somebody else like affirming that yeah i've i've proven myself as a poker player and i think i like the idea of that [Music] i've never really been interested in the the sponsorship of poker or the the celebrity of poker i mean for me it's all about the game a lot of people ask me like you know oh online poker that's not real poker uh like how can you like understand what someone's doing if you can't see them and the example i always give is that like if the six best poker players were playing live poker with each other i mean these guys don't have poker face well they've all got a really good poker face they're not giving away tells physically or not many so i mean if these guys were playing would they just be flipping coins with each other of course not they're playing some game so i mean that's exactly what online poker is it's just like six guys with really good poker faces playing poker together it used to be that poker was something that people played in person over the table there was no record of what happened you only got to play 20 or 30 hands an hour it was a very slow moving game it was very hard to get an idea of who was winning and who was losing and what was working and what wasn't before online poker everyone was terrible at the game it's such a complex game and you know they were playing tic-tac-toe when they were trying to play chess nowadays with online poker people have so many software programs you can calculate the odds of any situation you want you can draw complex trees saying you know if this guy does this on the flop and this guy does this on certain turn cards what's the equity when this river card comes because people were able to play so many hands of online poker in a short period of time all of a sudden people were able to access pieces of statistical information that they never had seen before you know people were able to say like you know how did i fare with pocket aces over the last 20 000 hands like 20 000 hands is probably more hands than most live poker players have played in their lifetime that's been an exaggeration but you know 20 thousand hands is a lot of hands and so now all of a sudden it was like we can prove things statistically that anybody that understands basic math can understand the internet really created an exponential increase in skill not only were you able to get so many hands faster you know you don't need a dealer you can play 10 tables at a time so maybe you're getting 20 times as many hands but also it created a web a sharing network where people were just able to feed ideas off of each other and learn so quickly i think what people haven't realized yet though is poker's still in its infancy and i really believe over the next 10 years we'll feel the same way about ourselves as we do about the live players 10 years ago the players 10 years from now are just going to be so much better than us in any given hand of poker there's just a huge amount of different things that flutter through your mind it's a game that not only has this kind of technique element like you know in the math and strategy of the game like any game like chess or something there's also like a massive human element which is equally complex at the end of the day like every player plays differently and and you really have to understand what someone else is thinking about it's really like a mind reading trick and and the cards are kind of like clues as to what the person is thinking about during a hand and and the better you can kind of read the cards the more you can pull off the like gypsy mind reading trick i mean that's what it really comes down to so i'm playing 40 80 know them and hold them heads up i had 35 000 in front effective stacks are about 450 big blinds i'm on the button with pockets raised tens in the button to 240 he passed it to 720. he was three betting something around 22 definitely the play right here is the call the flop comes out ace ten seven all close that ten comes on the flops it's just a monster flop for you there's about fourteen hundred dollars in the pod and he bets eight hundred dollars it's on the smaller side this board texture it's a little bit suspicious because of that i decided to call turns the eight of spades now my opponent checks i take that as a sign of him giving you mean he's giving up could mean he's trapping us pop's about three thousand i bet about twenty six hundred and he check raises me to ten thousand eight hundred he can have a weak ace you can have any pair but king queen jack queen jack with one club i have 10 cards that could give me a full house 23 of the time we're going to also do japan there ever comes a kiss is the king of spades and he shoves for basically pot jams it's an absurdly big bad he knows that he's only representing very strong hand flash queen high flush or block the math says to call him if i'm not calling thirty four dollars so i'd probably make the call with pockets [Music] [Music] today we're at the commerce working on raw deal segments usually my producers just email me some files take a look at those and then write my own segments hey everyone i'm here with tony dunce the new host of the raw deal please tell us what that entails well what's going to happen is i'm going to pop up once or twice an episode and really just get a moment to speak on whatever i'd like to about probably about the strategy of a hand that we just witnessed or perhaps something that's going on in the episode as far as players conduct behavior and what's going on in poker in general now you have a blogging card player you're known for telling it like it is are you gonna do the same on the show uh i i certainly hope so and i've been encouraged to do precisely that [Music] this segment will be one of the first times in televised poker that the public gets to see the perspective of the young online generation i feel a little pressure because i want my generation of players to respect what i put out there and i want to make us look good make us look like we're the ones that really know what's going on with poker so i want to be an appropriate ambassador i want to make you know my friends and the guys who grew up teaching me poker look smart [Music] right now i'm just getting a lot of really good cards i think my table thinks that i'm really crazy aggressive and um actually i've just had legitimately good hands so if i just keep picking up pocket kings that'd be nice i think i'm right now at about a hundred and ten hundred fifteen k danielle anderson here on day three of the lapc we're at 126 players now you're one of them yeah extremely uh well short stacked right i was extremely short stacked i just don't know about that so yeah you said you got bucky tell us about that well i was real short and uh it was pretty much the first semi-decent hand i'd had that somebody hadn't opened the pot so i had jack tan and i shoved got snap called by something i thought for sure he had a big hand he had pocket eight so we were racing i was pretty happy with that and i hit a 10 on the river so nice little double up for me yeah so what are you a little bit of breathing room um at about 89k okay good yeah good little bit of room the last time we spoke it was at borgata that was your first time it wasn't too long ago back in september and you really felt like a newbie and when you were yeah and now it just it's it's so different i mean you know everyone and it's just yeah how does it feel it's fun i feel like i'm you know it's like a nice transition into the tournament it's nice to like recognize people and see familiar faces and i've kind of made some friends so even when i'm traveling alone i have people to talk to and hang out with well continue the good luck thanks and uh well you're okay now yeah i got a little more breathing room than i had so i'm feeling pretty good chipping a chair right exactly or 89 000. yeah whatever thank you thanks much it's good seeing you too coming back from this world where you have no responsibilities no obligations no timetables or deadlines or anything like that and then trying to plug you back in where you've got all these people relying on you being prompt and punctual the difficult part has been the responsibility i [ __ ] up an interview yesterday where i missed it i got a my flight was delayed i forgot to message my correspondent to wpt and informal of this and the people who were doing the interview tried to call me while i was just about to take off and it was a disaster and i felt like a total [ __ ] you know it turned out that i'd like gone six days without emailing my correspondent wpt i had no idea i feel like a dick about it but i just had no idea that six days had passed they just seemed to click away i don't want to be a bad employee and i don't have this attitude like i don't have to do this [ __ ] i don't want to do these things i want to do them but i'm definitely concerned that six years of habit are going to be very hard to break and i'm going to continue making those kind of mistakes even though i do not intend to i am not uh i am not sure to what degree of of trouble i am in currently [Music] my position is tenuous and temporary and if they decide that i'm not what they're looking for or the segments didn't turn out that well or i'm a hassle to deal with they can just call me [Music] [Music] now is i knew that guy was bluffing and i was letting him bluff i had pocket jacks on the sideboard i knew he was i don't oh god i almost i was just going to let him keep bluffing at me because i knew he was just going to keep firing at me [Music] two minutes it's a rough flop can you guys thank you nice playing with you guys jay yeah it's all good what can you do i think i should have called what's that keep it if you need it i'll be all right i got stuff in my hotel room yeah oh if i've known that i'd call the last hand yep see you later boss i'm out bought him for ten thousand played for three days and i go home empty-handed it's rejecting it's not fun of course you want to make it but you know i kind of know some of the wpt staff and i've gotten to know some of the regular players and so yeah i think every tournament that i'm at helps me get me closer to that you know goal of the sponsorship [Music] most of the people in washington dc don't have any interest in gambling whatsoever gambling is a state issue not a federal issue that's why you can have utah and nevada share a border and completely different laws on gambling but the operators were in other countries so it was unclear whether internet poker was really legal or illegal and even if it was illegal who could do anything about it department of justice hated internet poker but they did not have the weapons they need to close it down you got to have a defendant who is physically present in the united states and you need a good statute that makes an activity illegal they didn't have the statute the best they could use was the wire act which is a statute passed in 1961 designed to go after telegraph wires for horse races it's kind of like using stone tools to do brain surgery um it might work but it's extremely messy so they want a bill passed that will clearly state that the wire act covers internet poker and year after year republicans in the house of representatives keep introducing bills to try to make internet gambling expressly illegal this is a scourge on our society and they would pass one house and not another or they'd pass out of committees but not pass the house [Music] what we had in 2006 was the majority leader of the u.s senate is bill frist republican from tennessee he's the one who pushed through the only bill that ever passed the unlawful internet gambling enforcement act and how this happened is really a an incredible story and really in the front of democracy how y'all doing hello good to see you yes indeed the speculation is that bill first wanted to try to make a presidential run and that this was a way of trying to shore up his um his evangelical base are we going to lead or are we going to follow and the republicans as we all know have a clear cut vision of where we're going to take this country and he didn't care about internet gambling either but jim leach who's a very powerful republican from iowa does care he wants to outlaw internet gambling internet gambling is crack cocaine for gamblers you just click the mouse and lose your house iowa of course is the state with the first presidential primaries so bill frist figures well a good way to win over jim leach and establish his bona fide credentials with the extreme right wing is to outlaw internet gambling as it is now this industry threatens to undermine the quality of life of millions of americans by bringing an addictive behavior right into our living rooms but they couldn't get enough votes for for congress to pass a bill that would pass both houses nobody cares about cared about the issue bill frist saw an opportunity by attaching it to a must-pass piece of legislation the safe port act no one in their mind was going to vote against the ports act which is essentially essentially a national security policy the safe port act had passed both the house of representatives and the senate they go to conference committee at like one o'clock in the morning on saturday it was at that point that the past of senator frist the language for the uigea was then inserted into the conference report no hearings no discussion no chance to even read the bill it was essentially thrust down and to a certain extent hidden by those who pass the law the safe port act will make this nation more prepared more prosperous and more secure there's comments from members of the senate and house of representatives saying this is not the way laws are supposed to be made what does banning internet gaming have to do with port security what kind of social cultural authoritarianism are we advocating here this section was added to the bill in an attempt to fire up the far right anti-gaming elements in time for this year's election the republicans simply rammed it through and they said you don't like it then vote against the safe port act and we will campaign against you that you're in favor of terrorism it's that kind of process that was engaged in that really upset a lot of people the senate changes the people who serve in this body change but what doesn't change is that every one of us who serves believes deeply in the genius of the american democracy mr president yield the floor the uigea does only two things made it a crime to accept money for illegal gambling and then it was supposed to create regulations that would prevent payment processors banks and others from sending money from the us to operators the processing from players to operators and then operators back to players to pay their winnings is the lifeblood of the business ui gea was an attempt to sever that it became harder and harder for americans to simply get their money to a site so the payment processors the middlemen the e-wallets filled that void the financial industry in response to the uigea became much riskier and as a result much more expensive and much more creative in terms of how they would process transactions for the internet poker operators when the uigea hit every online poker site serving u.s customers had a big decision to make were they going to leave the market or were they going to push their luck and and stay in the market party poker who was the biggest site in the world at the time chose to leave the market while poker stars in full tilt chose to stay keep in mind party poker was the industry leader the world's largest online poker site essentially says we are leaving the united states market that's a remarkable thing party poker was a publicly traded company they have to answer to shareholders they have commerce regulations they have to follow poker stars in full tilt private ownership they just have to decide whether or not personally they want to take the risk there was a risk but there was also a huge reward [Music] once party poker left the market it became a wide open race between poker stars and full tilt every year that passed after the uigea they got a i'm little more pokerstars and full tilt aggressively went after television shows full tilt created poker after dark pokerstars had the big game and the two are constantly battling from unlike poker supremacy these are the top two teams and it's inevitable that one wants to up the other we're very proud today to announce tom dwan as the newest member of team fulton they paid me 110 billion and that's i was like look holding out for 12 120 billion but all i got was 11 d there was definitely like discussion what's the better site but i think that in a sense helped both kind of like the coke pepsi situation where they became the two that elevated each other the parade doesn't stop the players continue to play the money keeps rolling in and whatever party parker was making in 2004 and five it's triple double quadrupled whatever by 2011 poker stars is by far the world's largest poker room operating in hundreds of different countries all over the world pokerstars aggressively went after the international market [Music] pokerstars.com so they're branching out all over the world whereas full tilt decided hey we're just going to focus on the american market it's a king the success of poker stars after their global marketing showed that online poker could be bigger than anyone expected they thought it was big with party poker and poker stars took it to a new level we are the world champion right here [Music] with the passing of the uiga there was a noticeable kind of shift in like what was what started popping up on your online tables i mean you started finding that rather than having like three out of six players be professional players maybe five out of six were professionals and the sixth guy was actually pretty good i guess it became more defined how good you could actually be like it wasn't just like good average bad it was like good better really really good you know it got a bit more specific as to how good really good players were for a while online there was definitely this online culture of people kind of testing their meddle against each other that almost came to the like point of hilariousness where everyone would play anyone at any moment like oh i've made a fair bit of money playing poker let's see how good i actually am at it even if it costs me a bit of money to find out [Music] people just want to play the biggest stakes there is they wake up in the morning and they're like i want to play the biggest stakes poker there is and some amount of those people want to play bigger stakes than there has been it sort of happened overnight at full tilt poker became you know the epicenter for the biggest cash games online the nosebleed games as they call them were just amazing you've never even imagined that games could be this big on the internet for a while there were a bunch of 500 000 no limit hold them ring games and millions changed hands between the biggest winners and losers nobody could believe this was real money these were bigger than most of the big live games the most i've ever won in a session was 1.6 something million it's tough to to play nose leads exclusively for a living because the swings are just massive when online poker started having games so high stakes that you could lose 500 000 in a single session it was just a fan's wet dream it quarter sort of created the circus-like atmosphere where people wanted just to log on to full tilt just to watch i think it makes sense you know they have right at their computer the ability to watch you know 200 000 pots that are real [Music] i've played my fair share of nosebleed stakes i guess the highest i've really played a lot of mileage at is 100 200. strangely enough it didn't actually really feel that weird to stop playing these sticks i guess after playing for sort of five years at the time your desensitivity to swings and money had like at least mine had become so kind of strong that once you started playing and winning and losing like 200 000 in a day it just kind of felt like natural which is why i guess as an observer even one that plays poker uh watching people play higher than that seems insane like winning and losing a million dollars but i guess they just had that same feeling on a scale above me yeah for better or worse [Music] as much as i love being a poker player i think it's one of the most emotionally challenging professions i can think of obviously everybody has stress at work but a poker player can actually lose money at work and can lose money at work for months at a time for a whole year well the main psychological challenge the poker player is faced with is just that you know a lot of the time just lose a lot of money and you lose constantly like there's no professional poker player who hasn't had at least one or maybe two just demoralizing long losing stretches where the cards aren't running well for you and then you lose your confidence and then you have to figure out whether or not you're playing well the problem with poker is that a lot of times your results don't actually correlate with your skill over like a given month let's say so you can be playing really really well and losing money and it's not as if you know you're playing really well because there's so much uncertainty you know when you go through a downswing as a poker player the difficult part is not the money you lost the difficult part is that it makes you question your ability to make money in the future so if i go on a 800 000 downswing what's tough is not the 800 000 i lost i mean it's tough what's tough is what if i can't beat this game anymore what if i can't beat it for as much as i could have and now my over the next 10 years expectation of making 20 million dollars or whatever it is i lost that even when it's obvious even when it should be obvious that you know you just got unlucky it doesn't matter everyone will question themselves they'll say maybe i'm just not that good maybe the last three years have just been you know a fluke you know maybe i should have been losing all this time and i just got lucky and now the reality is just setting in and it can be very hard to you know break away from that and and and remain objective you're always being tested always for most people online poker and poker in general tends to be better suited for part-time players not professionals because the added stress of having a family life or having children can often be the tipping point for people to really struggle mentally with some of the highs and lows of the game right before ui gea i was on a really big downswing in poker and i was kind of at like an all-time low i hated playing i hated every single time i sat down at that computer to put in a session there was a possibility that things were just going to go terrible and that i was going to end up feeling like i wanted to curl up into a ball and die at that point my thought was that it it wasn't worth all the emotion that was going on you know it was like poker almost controlled who she was kind of at that time you know if it was a good day in poker you know it was a good day at our house if it was a bad day at poker you know it was a bad day at our house i would say at that point i was like bordering on depression just with every single losing session every single loss every single bad beat every single down swing it just it stuck with me and it i couldn't go about my daily activities without it like hanging over my head and just bringing me down [Music] i was heavy into gambling i can give you a story after work one day and we didn't i didn't make much money back then neither one of us did really and i stopped at a bar with my sister and i cashed my check i'd spent all that in pull tabs and then turned around and borrowed my sister's check so both checks are just about gone but people there knew me well enough they let me buy the box out and i broke about lost about a hundred dollars well i felt like i just won because lisa had enough to pay my sister back and still have come home to lorry with money otherwise two paychecks would have been gone seeing what he went through with his problem gambling definitely made me more aware of my own habits with poker i kind of worried a little bit about like maybe i genetically have that in me and i just haven't you know given it the opportunity to escape kind of so when she said she's going to professional gambling it i mean it scared the hell out of me because i know what we could had in life and we didn't get in life because of me [Music] probably one of the biggest things that changed was more when danny got pregnant with easton um is when she really she made a a big commitment to you know controlling her emotions hi hurry i missed you today how are you when i got pregnant with easton that was a huge turning point in my poker career um it just gave me just so much more drive and devotion to you know to being responsible it was different when she was pregnant because she didn't have that choice to be able to react emotionally because she knew that it affected our family and that it would affect easton now i can you know i can sit here and be doing something across the room and you know i'll ask her how our session went lost five thousand or something like that you know and i didn't i didn't notice everything was going great but i kind of felt like i just wanted to make sure that i had a backup plan and that i had something to fall back on so i decided to go back to school once she got the rn then i relaxed because it was like all right you're a professional poker player but you also don't rely on the rest of your life you have something to fall back on i think that's important now i just have all the confidence in the world ever [Music] all right jeremy you can either hang out and watch the tournament or you can pay me back well when can you pay me back if i lend you [Music] what's that okay that's fine that's fine uh we are going to watch the premiere of the raw deal on the world poker tour and just kind of hang out play a little blind man's bluff poker and i don't know just relax enjoy yeah i think my friends will tell me if they think it sucks [Music] [Laughter] i wouldn't say that i'm nervous but i am excited to see how it turns out because it took a couple of goes to get this right and yeah i'm just curious how it will turn out and what people's reaction will be yeah i got the ace out though i was like yeah you got too many chips on you just got to keep them honest this may be it hi i'm tony dartmouth online is bond 18. let's take a closer look at that last hand there's a problem simply because he has the balls to try and block your life however the river bluff is a clear mistake and here's why first is the science at nearly four to one to make a call with anything in his range that has shown value second i think john is failing to think about poker has not just provided a few things to my life it has given me my life one day i was on my couch watching this show and these people who back then i all thought were superstars poker and amazing at the game and you know personalities i would never have a chance to meet and now i'm the guy who crafts petty insults at them and it's so absurd [Music] this is dixie nixon hi baby hi hello sweetheart how are you what do you think it's just surreal to me that danny is buying me this horse because it's something that i never thought would happen i i never thought i'd be able to have a horse again and if it wasn't if it wasn't for danny and and for her poker plan it never would have happened what do you think [Music] i think my mom already loves the horse i'm guessing we're gonna leave having purchased a new horse i'm pretty excited for her to have a horse to just make her happy [Music] i play poker because i love poker because i'm good at poker i work my way up through like the bottom and i'm really proud of where i like have ended up when i found out sitting around on a computer playing cards for a living was something you could actually do i was like that's it that's what i'm gonna do with my life together has definitely given me the opportunity to live life outside of the conventional system it's given me the opportunity to allow myself to be happy poker is not just a game it's so wrapped up in every other aspect of my life it's like kind of become a part of my identity [Music] [Music] it's a multi-billion dollar industry with millions of participants and on friday it was shut down by federal agents the fbi seized the domain names of poker stars full tilt poker and absolute poker and prosecutors charged 11 people with fraud money laundering and illegal gambling we'd heard rumors of the skies falling plenty of times but this time it really felt like it was sites were shut down people's funds were frozen the doj and federal government issued statements saying you know basically it's over guys now with charges of bank fraud and money laundering it's clear that the uh the focus of the prosecutor's case is on payments the federal government alleges that individuals lied to u.s banks by setting up false businesses to act as conduits for internet gaming payments being disguised as something else miscoding transactions the sites to get money from the players in the united states to them and vice versa had to be lying to the banks there's no doubt that that was going on the federal government seized money all over the world and they froze the accounts of all the players for players that relied on poker as their main source of income all of a sudden you know the tap is gone there's essentially panic it's like 1929 around the bank people are like wait get my money i need to get my 500 and they get my 5 000 i mean there's really a run on the bank and a panic and the entire poker world essentially blows up this is a declaration of war by the united states against these companies the sites were stamped with the official seals of the fbi and the department of justice i mean that's intimidating [ __ ] you know one day you're an online poker player and the next day you're an outlaw people were wondering if they would ever get their money back and nobody knew these answers their money was gone their jobs were gone everyone was lost the entire poker world will remember april 15 2011. the united states of america was the biggest market it was the most lucrative market and it was the one that all of the sites wanted to target it's gone now it's completely gone and all the money that they were spending you know in my estimation three to four hundred million dollars a year in order to get new american customers is gone it was a huge blow to to the online poker community when they realized okay this is legitimately the end of online poker as we know it because there were no sites ready to to step in there was no next step i would advise everyone not to wait it out in any way i think online poker is gone from america probably forever at first i was just kind of like oh people might be overreacting a little bit you know and then as i read more and as i realized that they were like arresting these people and um and some very like reputable people in the poker world were saying that you know this is like the apocalypse of poker like this is this is it like as of right now i don't have a job and i have you know a decent amount of my my personal assets are online right now and i i don't know what the state is of that i don't know if i'll get that back or not um so i just kind of panicked and i called my mom and i was kind of trying to tell her what was going on and i just started bawling and then i kind of sat here and just all day was kind of glued to the computer reading updates and i cried like a little girl the average public anyways i don't think probably understands what this means for like thousands and thousands of poker players you know there's some people on the poker forums and stuff with like 95 of their network like wrapped up in these online sites and right now it's in limbo like we're all hoping that we're gonna get our money back and we'd like to be optimistic but really we don't know you know i think like the hardest part of this is that like my goals are like gone like i'm not gonna get the chance to even like i don't i don't even get the chance to accomplish my goals you know um because a lot of my life goals were just tied up in poker and poker is what i was best at you know it's like i derive like a lot of my like pride in a lot of my um i guess some like confidence just from poker because i was good at something and it's just really hard to think that like i'm not even going to get the chance you know you are my dance i'm my only sunshine you make me happy the skies are great you never know mommy love you please don't take my sunshine away yes i would describe the mood in the poker community post black friday as a combination of panic outrage and befuddlement you've got a bunch of people who probably anticipated that they were going to have an income for a long time not only did they have their funds frozen but anything they were planning on doing with like future money yet to be generated that's all gone then you've got the people who had jobs within the industry that were principally funded by the sites they're [ __ ] you've got people in my position who thought they had money but now aren't really sure if they have money and might get taxed on money that's essentially been made imaginary to them but is not imaginary to the irs and that's really [ __ ] up to think that your government's gonna both take away your source of income but then tax you on the income that you sort of kind of made by means they essentially deemed illegal it's like i mean what do you say that if going back to australia was truly a viable possibility for me then of course i would consider it but right now i've got a very good thing going on with the world poker tour i love my job um but if that didn't exist i probably would be looking for some way out of this country be it europe australia new zealand something to get out from under this [ __ ] as a canadian living in montreal black friday didn't originally have like a a large impact on my day-to-day life you know i i woke up in the morning and played the same games i was always playing it was kind of funny not to see some of the faces i'd always seen but i you know the games were actually i found them a lot more fun at first because it's they were all european players i was playing with and there tends to be a kind of subtle difference in how people play the game across the uh atlantic it's a little confusing to me that the country that has the hit song you've got to know when to hold them know when to fold them would ban online poke here like it's just a very american game and it ties in positively i think with a lot of the things that americans consider like a lot of the ideology that americans consider important like the idea that anyone has a shot given that they work hard and they have the aptitude to get where they want to go yeah that life is a meritocracy uh poker is kind of like a great form where those kind of ideologies are expressed i think a lot of people had basically written off their money there's just this real kind of misanthropic kind of poker mindset towards it where people just didn't think they were getting paid back and there's a lot of talk of you know the sky is falling and such the big news of the week uh we got to get to right away poker stars and full tilt poker both signed deals adam with the doj for the sole purpose of allowing us players to cash out their balances i'm happy to announce that the poker stars will be processing cash outs uh very very soon the best case scenario is tuesday a couple weeks after black friday pokestars actually paid back all the players so i think people were pretty happy about that even if there was some anxiety about you know the economy as a whole [Music] there's definitely a sort of trend of anxiety running through the poker community right now about what fulltilt's planning to do i mean they haven't released any statements they haven't released any player funds where is the money full tilt where is it i fully expected full tilt to have paid out by now as much as it's it's shocking at this point that they haven't paid out can you imagine a scenario where they don't at this point i'd say the chances of getting paid back seem pretty high just because you know full tilts revenues are kind of not hidden i have a fair amount of money on there that i'd kind of like to get back after black friday happened i felt like people weren't actually getting the story and i felt like there was a lot of important stuff that was happening you know hundreds of millions of dollars were at stake and people's livelihoods were at stake and nobody knew what was going on so i started independent poker news site to do that right and it turned out to be a real trip a lot different than i expected really all anyone cared about for the like nine or so months that subject poker existed um was full tilt and that's really all we cared about too everything else was just tangential i joked about being a spy constantly like we were talking to a lot of anonymous sources and you know we were looking through corporate documents that we weren't supposed to have and we were getting all this insider information we were breaking all these stories and it just got really really intense because full tilt had 300 million dollars of players money locked up and that's a really big deal and it was just sort of perpetually sinking in how big of a deal that was [Music] photo lost money in a lot of dumb ways there was 128 million dollar shortfall which was quite remarkable and the doj did in fact seize about 159 million dollars from the company but by far the largest way that money flowed out of full tilt was by distributions they gave themselves massive distributions they paid themselves 10 million dollars a month [Music] maybe at the peak of their profitability which was probably all the way back in 2007 they were making that much but they were losing company in uh 2010 early 2011 and they were still paying themselves 10 million dollars a month in addition to that they also hired a huge stable of sponsored players a lot of them were paid 100 000 a year and some of them were paid you know 500 000 a million dollars a year just to wear this little piece of felt they paid their gambling partners and their friends enormous amounts of money and when players are sending emails into support and saying hey how do you keep player funds they always got the same answer player funds are safe and secure we keep them segregated and that was just a blatant lie at some point they stopped splitting up player funds from their operational expenses they started to simply spend money have their marketing budget pay their own salaries pay their own dividends from players funds howard letter ravitar those guys said specifically tell players that funds are segregated put funds or not [Music] the pool that they were meant to be holding for players that they said they were holding for players that money's gone as as an owner of full-tilt poker uh i took and i take full responsibility for what happened and what happened wasn't right and it caused a lot of pain a lot of suffering and um and in some cases just inconvenience for three million customers and um that that that wasn't right for that i'm truly sorry a big part of what made poker really appealing back in like 2003 when this big boom started were these celebrities these celebrities had this awesome appeal of being sort of old school gamblers and sort of having all the color and sort of almost cowboyishness that goes with that also the appeal of being sort of remarkably honorable this sort of honorable gambler [Music] even though it's sort of obvious in hindsight like here are these guys who had these paths that were sort of very shady coming in and holding hundreds of millions of dollars for us from an outside perspective that sounds like a really sketchy situation but when you're actually in it when we were actually in it we were really fooled [Music] as a result of black friday all the boys that were living here realized that without online poker available to them there wasn't much point in being here in the united states so they all moved abroad mostly to canada that's where uh chewie aaron and dan ended up all in toronto and as a result the house has been empty since it's odd because it is so large and i don't actually live in the physical house itself i live out the back so every day i walk into this just empty silent house that's not even quite mine my money on full tilt is essentially in a state of limbo i try and stay well read on the issue to see what's going to happen but there's so much hearsay still now it's just so hard to believe that something that had been around for almost a decade and it had to our knowledge no financial trouble suddenly imploded overnight i've heard more stories than i can count about people who have what would essentially be life-changing money locked up in their full tilt account a lot of people just kept most of what they had on whatever site they played the most at um so there are people with five or six figures that would you know completely make or break their life and then there are some guys who were high stakes cash players or who had a huge tournament score who had seven figures locked up on there so it's been really bad for some people so during the period in which the house has been empty mostly been occupying myself for reading uh do that in here for a long time i had two piles the must-read pile and the have red pile usually i just like grab something off the mustard pile post up on my couch and with the highlighter sit there for hours on end after black friday i realized i was gonna have to stay in the united states because of my job with the wpt so i started working on my first original book i wouldn't necessarily call this book a memoir but it is a pretty clear look of what it's like to play online poker or poker for a living as a young adult and a lot of the things i was able to do over the course of my life and then write upon in this book are a result of the freedom and resources that playing poker for a living allowed me it's been a great ride what can you say like it was it was an awful lot of fun and i still think there is some money to be made in poker but the the poker of of my memories and young adulthood best i can tell is over here we go guys let me grab you some more iced tea here anything else i can get for you right away okay enjoy since black friday has started working at rounders which is like a bar and grill um restaurant i've been working there for a couple months now can i get you something to drink i will have water what would you like do you want full tilt poker hasn't released any money to us players and unfortunately i had about 95 of my funds in full tilt [Music] i don't know that i have it in me to start from ground zero again i just it's just such a grind and it's so hard and i just don't really have it in me to do that anymore you guys need a little bit for so long a lot of our life plans and goals were wrapped up in that and it's really hard to just in the blink of an eye change everything and alter your path now that it's settled in a little bit since black friday i think the the biggest thing that that hurts is just the you know the dream is kind of gone and the the progress of what she was you know working towards and and really really good at it's not that it's not that she failed at it somebody just took it away and said it's done that's hard for me you know as the husband sit there and i i don't have an answer you know i can't there's nothing i can do to to make it better so that's that's probably what hurts the most all right three two one welcome to the two plus two poker cast for the week of july 31st 2012. mike johnson here along with adam schwartz it is a great day for online poker players it is mike who says there's no fairy tale endings in real life uh yeah dust off the champagne bottles here's the story a 700 million dollar deal has been struck with the doj that will settle all civil charges between online poker giants poker stars and full tilt poker and are you ready for this the twist in this poker stars will acquire the assets of their former rival full-tilt poker from the doj with the plan to relaunch the disgraceful teal poker room uh later this year this is massive it really is the best news of all is that the players who have had money stuck online stuck at full tilt poker since april of 2011. they're going to get that back 300 million over 300 million dollars [Music] the raw deal was well received in season nine they brought me back for season ten now we're at the point of negotiating for the future i'm surprised but i actually like having a job and you know it doesn't require me to do anything that's unnatural for the most part i show up and i meet people and i talk about poker and i wear a suit and smile and it's not you know terribly hard so it's not the like [Music] at the moment i'm playing in a band called alexi matov it's kind of like a blues psychedelic rock three piece that i like sing play guitar play piano in i mean in the future with poker i definitely plan to keep playing i mean i love the game it's really given me the opportunity to kind of like sit down decide what i want and then formulate a plan to achieve that it's just at this point i think that music is going to be the major priority that i work on [Music] since black friday i've been traveling back and forth um to la i go to the commerce casino to play live poker usually i'm home for like six weeks and then i go out there for about seven to ten days and then i come home and do the same thing so all right i'll be home soon okay okay i love you one more hug i really realized how much poker means to me and how much i do love playing poker and i now know that playing poker for a living is something that i definitely want to continue doing for as long as i can and i guess if that means i have to continue flying across the country to play live poker that's what i'll do bye buddy [Music] i think online poker is in a short-term dark period here in america but at the end of the day the economics are just too obvious nobody's going to sit back and let these sites in europe or in other parts of the world make billions of dollars a year when they know that it would be equally as popular here in america will online poker eventually become legalized will it be regulated will this create an impetus to change and to quit ignoring this act this this action is as though it doesn't exist it does exist it will always exist gambling and poker playing will always be part of society in our culture poker has a future online poker has a future it doesn't have anything to do with what came before probably not it's going to look different it always does 20 years ago nobody ever would have thought you'd have people playing poker online period so i think it's going to be very surprising the way it develops i mean the game is going to be big the game is going to grow but what it looks like who's playing it who's winning who's losing oh that's a mystery which is what poker is it's a mystery you pick up your cards you bet your chips and you don't really know what's going to happen until the final card is dealt the final card hasn't been dealt in fact we haven't even seen the flop yet [Music] [Music] ultimatepoker.com is pleased to announce that the wait is over we are now live and dealing online poker in the state of nevada ultimate poker is proud of this historic moment as the first trusted and legal online poker company to have real money poker in the united states [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Gravitas Documentaries

Views: 170,734

Keywords: poker documentary, online poker, full tilt poker, Poker, Gambling, Online Poker, online poker documentary, documentary, playing online poker for money, playing online poker for a living, online poker strategy, online poker real money, bet raise fold, world series of poker, story of online poker, jay rosenkrantz, gambling movies, how to play poker, gambling documentary, gambling movie, poker movies, poker stories, bet raise fold full movie, bet raise fold full documentary

Id: LTgnKminR8A

Length: 101min 39sec (6099 seconds)

Published: Tue May 16 2023