Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Should You Believe Everything You Read Online and in Magazines About Daniel Negreanu and Other Brick and Mortar Top Poker Pros Playing For Millions Online?

Well, I certainly don't. If you read Daniel Negreanu's recent blog post about his latest month playing $100-$200 no-limit poker online and his swings of being ahead $200,000 and now even, you might want to ask yourself why Negreanu would bother playing online poker for such stakes in the first place, especially given his huge success offline in brick and mortar poker rooms across the world.

My answer is that he probably isn't really playing for the amounts he says he is and blogs about. Then you have Mike The Mouth Matusow who claims to be another multimillion-dollar online poker player...and supposedly multimillion-dollar victim to the UltimateBet scam. Do I believe all this? Not for a second!

If you remember, I once wrote a magazine article about how I thought the TV show "High Stakes Poker" was nothing more than a staged script, with piles of purple $500 and yellow $1,000 chips stacked neatly next to huge wads of packaged $100 bills. All which looked great for the cameras. My challenge was, Why would Negreanu, Sammy Farha or any of the rest of them on that show risk that kind of money on TV or anywhere else? Why would they not stick to playing against players of lower caliber in big-time Vegas cash games and tournaments, where they strictly have the best of it? My grandfather once told me, "Richard, don't gamble anywhere unless you have the best of it." I would think that Negreanu's and Matusow's grandfathers told them something similar. I still think the "High Stakes Poker" show is jacked-up hype, endorsement money for Negeanu and the rest of them, and in a word--BULLSHIT!

So when I read about these same guys playing for millions online, when they cannot see their opponents' tells or even know who they are, and where they cannot invoke lots of the skills that made them great brick and mortar players to begin with, I get the same feeling--it's all bullshit!

Do you agree? Let me know.