Justin Shronk scours the Internet forums and deciphers the tournament trail scuttlebutt to bring you the best dirt and gossip professional poker has to offer. Welcome to Pokerazzi!
Phil Ivey: im broke
On February 11th of 2008 something happened that could never have been foreseen at the opening of either of our online accounts. On February 11th, I had more money on Full Tilt than Phil Ivey.
“Did Shronk luckbox some big score?” No no no, my friends. Actually, something even harder to believe happened – Phil ran through his entire Full Tilt bankroll.
In a chat with his most recent nemesis at a low stakes table, Ivey told trex313 that he was out of money on FTP, and could only play higher if he was able to get in touch with one of his friends for a loan/stake/transfer.
Now, it is very unlikely that this means Phil is anywhere close to being real-world broke (in fact, nearly impossible given that he is likely a big stockholder in FTP), but for that one sweet day, all the microdonks on the internet could rejoice in knowing they had a bigger bankroll than Phil Ivey.
(the chat transcript is as follows)
trex313: hey
trex313: i’m at your big boy table
trex313: if you wanted to play higher
Phil Ivey: im broke right now. this is the whole load
trex313: oh
Phil Ivey: cant get in touch with anyone
trex313: you want to crossbook double?
trex313: or you want to just play this
Phil Ivey: call me
trex313: i don’t know your phone number
Phil Ivey: get it from someone
trex313: who knows your number?
Phil Ivey: u have erick lindgrens number
trex313: lemme see if mike’s on
Phil Ivey: zigmund
Phil Ivey: patrick
trex313: matasow
trex313: matasow’s not answering
trex313: howa bout i xferr you the money
trex313: on here
trex313: since you have more credit than me
trex313: since everyone knows you
Phil Ivey: ok i will send it back to u tommorow if i
lose and if i win i will send it to u tonight
trex313: okay
trex313: how much
Phil Ivey: ante up for now
Phil Ivey: 200000
trex313: are we crossboking?
Phil Ivey: u know how it works?
trex313: no tell me
trex313: or should we just wait til you get the 200
trex313: then just play it straight up
Phil Ivey: lets jus play 5 and 10 until u get my
number and then we can discuss how it works and
play really high
trex313: 5 and 10?
trex313: here?
Phil Ivey: yeah
Mouthing Off
Mike Matusow is nothing if not honest. It’s one of the things his fans love about him, and at times something that gets him in trouble. I’m still not sure whether or not I am surprised then, when Mike (on his weekly video show ‘The Mouthpiece’) in a discussion about why he doesn’t consider himself an online tournament player, and about how he usually can’t focus in online tournaments, said the following:
“I did it once for a friend of mine who was 6 hours deep into a tournament. I’m not gonna name one site, but I took over for him because he’s not a really good closer, and we finished third, cuz I put my heart into it, and I knew we had chips to move with and I could evaluate players, and we should have won it if we woulda won a coinflip.”
It’s not hard to decipher that Mike is describing a situation that has apparently been rampant in online tournaments for a long time, but has recently been brought to light – the practice of a more experienced player taking over another player’s account deep into a tournament.
Now, the practice’s ethicality has been debated to death on radio shows and forums of late, but despite your stance on it, it’s fairly agreeable that it’s probably not a good idea for famous pros (more specifically pros that represent online sites) to be admitting to this behavior in the current climate.
It’s been talked about that some pros have been taking over for their horses in past years in tournaments, and this fact has been subsequently torn to shreds on certain internet forums, where posters call this cheating and even worse. Just this fact alone should be dissuasive enough, but some of these pros (in essentially admitting violating the terms of the sites they represent) could be putting their sponsorship deals in jeopardy.
It will be interesting to see how prevalent these admissions from sponsored pros are in the coming months, and what choices the sites who back them choose to make.
Hit The Books, Kid!
Shannon Shorr broke onto the scene in 2006 while taking a semester off from studying Engineering after qualifying for the Aussie Millions – his plan, however, was to go back to school after that semester.
After “accidentally” finishing 4th in that tournament and then making over $1 million at the Bellagio Cup II a few months later (including winning the Main Event), he found himself in the middle of the Cardplayer POTY race. His run of quick success made Shannon reconsider his choice to go right back to school after that semester. Up until a few weeks ago, he had been playing poker full-time.
Recently, he has made the decision to leave full-time poker and return to his 40-hour-a-week course load in order to get his degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Alabama. He says despite having a lot of catching up to do, and having “a 1% chance” of actually using his degree, he wanted the challenge of completing the difficult degree and something more concrete than poker as a fall-back plan.
After completing his degree, Shannon plans to return to poker in some capacity and then possibly moving on onto a career in business.
Pokerazzi says good-on-ya, kid. Get that book lernin’ while you can. If PokerRoad ever needs some Civil Engineering, we know who to call.
Breaking Helsinki
If you rail any of the highest No-Limit cash games on Full-Tilt Poker, you are familiar with the screenname “Ziigmund.” Ziigmund, real name Ilari Sahamies, who regularly mixes it up with the likes of Phil Ivey, Gus Hansen, and other random Euro-ballers, is most known for his Finnglish chat box trash-talk (once calling David Benyamine a “fat gay guy”), and for the perception among the other High Stakes NL players that Ziigmund runs better than Prefontaine* (“you’ll lose a race one day” is a war cry of a number of his opponents, including Gus).
Well, it seems that the Finn runs good at more than $50,000 coinflips. In a blog at pokerisivut.com, it was reported that Ziigmund and a fellow high-stakes player booked a €100,000 win (around $145,000) at roulette in the Helsinki Grand Casino. This is reported to be the biggest single win ever booked at the Helsinki Grand, despite it representing only a few buy-ins for Ziigmund and friend.
Gus Hansen was notified of Ziigmund’s win and was placed on suicide watch after writing in his blog: “These fucking good looking Scandinavian guys have all the luck.”
*google.com, new website, check it out