At this point, all of the truths have come to light. I am only updating this blog so that everything is in one place. For those of you who have not read it, I have come forward on HSNL and told the entire story of the Girah scandal. Since Jungleman confessed to playing on Girah's account, there is no reason anymore for me to protect him and hold back the truth.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19/high-stakes-pl-nl/summary-girah-scandal-dogishead-1083543/

This is my last and final word on the matter. I have answered every question asked of me over two days, and now I will be leaving poker (and this apartment) for good. From now on, I will be blogging/posting from this blog here:

http://inanitylane.blogspot.com/

Thank you everyone for your readership, for your support, and your comments.

Haseeb

It's been a long road, and I am tired.

Surely all of you by now have heard about the scandal that just took place. Jose "Girah" Macedo scammed several players out of money, and by being around the scandal many fingers have been pointed at me for supposedly taking part. I've spent the last couple of days defending myself on TwoPlusTwo, trying my best to answer every question asked of me, but the reality is that my name has been dragged so far through the mud that there's not much left to salvage. I've been dropped by Cardrunners, since they obviously can't have their names anywhere near me (which I understand completely) and a great many people who previously respected me now think I'm dishonest, and some even think I'm a mastermind puppeteer scam artist. And that sucks, but it is what it is. I suppose nothing that has been hoisted on me I haven't brought upon myself in some way in how I've handled this mess.

I will be the first to admit that I made many mistakes throughout this. For playing on Girah's account of course, in my handling this scandal and my interactions with TwoPlusTwo, but most especially for being dishonest and trying to protect myself and those around me. I've been angry, anxious, hasty, selfish and often thoughtless in how I've handled this. Admittedly, if I were on the outside, I would be pointing fingers at me too, calling for my own crucifixion; the way this scandal came out was full of drama and excitement, and managed to dance many times around suggesting me as privy to the con, then backing off for a bit, then starting again. Despite its absurdity, it was at once fascinating and stomach-churning to watch.

I know that I did not scam anyone, nor did I do anything to hurt anyone. I know that Jose duped me as he duped almost everyone. But in fear for myself, and for those around me, I have been dishonest and have tried to protect myself from some of the things that I did, and I have backed myself into a corner. I have been afraid of getting accused of something I did not do. Being afraid is tiring.

I feel like I've been through a whirlwind. Over the last week, a kid who I have for almost a year now thought of as a younger brother, who I had faith in and spent many days and nights trying to help out and give advice and build his career, who I've laughed with, taught, and encouraged... betrayed my trust, scammed me and my friend, has caused an enormous explosion in the poker world and shattered my career, and all the while as I have left my home for Europe for the first time uprooting and taking my entire life with me, trying in vain to get sleep with what has felt like a rock sitting in my stomach, all while trying defend myself to the poker community. I have been berated, had my finances and years of public reputation questioned and attacked, and have been demonized by the mass of TwoPlusTwo. And while all this has happened, I've done my best to help the victims uncover this scam and get them paid, initially worked with Jose to ensure that he remained willing to pay everyone back, since the last few days have tried desperately to get back in touch with him, and have tried what I could to protect my friends from the shrapnel of this mess. I am tired.

Honestly, what hurts is not the accusations or the speculation or any of that. I knew once this story came around, for my part in supporting Jose through his career I would get hell from the poker world. It's strange, but what hurt the most was getting cut from Cardrunners. Which seems like a small thing - I expected it, after all CR has had to deal with in the last couple of years of scandals and bad PR, I feel for them that they have to deal with me now - but for some reason, it made me feel incredibly sad. And I realize that in a way, it's a dismissal of everything that I've worked for over these last 5 years. The most curious thing is that of all of the people who try to accuse me of being a scammer or a cheat or being in the know on Jose's tricks, or even the people who question my finances - the only people speaking out are the people who don't know me. Virtually everybody who does actually know me and has dealt with me in my poker career has no doubt of my trustworthiness. Not that that matters, really, and I know that too.

I look back and realize that poker has been 5 years of my life now. 5 years! Shit. That's almost a quarter of me. I look back to the person I was when I started, an aimless and confused 16 year old boy - and, well... okay, I guess not that much has changed in that respect, but hey, I've got time to figure that out too.

I did a final interview in Bluff, confessing to everything I've done and addressing some of the other questions and accusations that people have been making towards me, but honestly, I'm done with it and tired of it. I spoke to them for quite some time so I don't know how much and what exactly they published, but I don't particularly care at this point. I'm not sure what incentive I would have to keep coming back for more when the online poker world is done with me. Which is okay I guess - the way it all ended up coming out couldn't make me look any worse. I can see in my most lucid moments how all of the connections, the coincidences, the misrememberings and other little things could point towards some sort of nefarious plot behind it all. But the truth is, all I wanted to do was to be a brother to Jose. It seems silly now, but helping him to write things, giving him advice, and backing him for games, encouraging him when he was downswinging; I always had faith in him and just wanted to help him, I was happy to see his success and wanted to see him grow. People seem to want to think of me as malicious and are trying to come up with reasons as to why I'd want to fabricate an identity and deceive the poker world, hatch some huge plot to steal from people, but I don't understand that really. I think the malicious people are far and few between in this world. Most everyone out there just wants to help people, and sometimes they choose the wrong people to help. I chose the wrong person to help, and believe me when I say that it hurts me that I did, a lot more than anyone else has been hurt in this. I feel very betrayed and confused by everything that's happened. And understandably the poker world is too. I don't know what to make of most of it. But I'm done trying to fix everything. It occurs to me that I don't want anymore what I've been trying so hard to fix.

I have lost the respect of many people who once respected me from all that has come out. And that's okay, I will be alright. And Twoplustwo now demonizes me, and that's alright as well. I know what I did and what I didn't do, my friends know what I did and what I didn't do, and that's all that really matters. The outcry of internet forums is not so scary when I think about it. But, there are also people who I truly respect in the poker world as well (some who I don't know personally), who think less of me now after seeing the way I have handled myself and learning of all that I did do. And that does hurt. And I will have to live with that, and carry it with me. And maybe someday I will become someone to earn back their respect too. But to those who think I had some part in Jose scamming people, that I knew anything about any of his lies, I am done trying to convince everyone of the truth. I have more important things to worry about than what people who don't know me or know the facts think about me. At this point, I owe it to myself to get on with my life and focus on myself.

I don't know what I'm going to do now, but it won't be poker. I have been playing for 5 years. I started with a free $50 bonus when I was 16 years old, and have since made well over a million dollars playing poker. Tens of thousands of players have learned from me, I have coached hundreds, and I have made very close friends with many along the way. I think I've known for some time though that poker has nothing more to teach me - has nothing more to give me. That my passion for not just poker itself, but for the experience of being a poker player, has been exhausted. My heart has been telling me this for a long time now, but my brain has been difficult to convince. But I realize all that's left for me in the poker world is money. And money is nice; even now I can still make a lot of it, playing, coaching, doing the poker thing. But I don't have much need for money I think. I don't know how I'm going to be making money for a while now, but I have plenty of money saved up and plenty of real estate and investments that will support me for a while.

The first thing I have decided to do is travel. I am in London now, which is as good a place as any to start. When I say travel, I mean travel. Not bouncing around airports, staying in casinos and resorts and hanging out with other gamblers. I am going to leave most of my stuff in Nottingham and embark with as little as I can. I don't know how much I'll plan it out, but I am going to try to travel across Europe by myself. I imagine I will learn and experience a lot, and I will probably write a lot as well. I don't know what I will get out of this, but it's something I've always been afraid of doing. I've always managed to convince myself that because of poker, it wasn't the right thing to do. Poker I think has always been an excuse of sorts to hold me back from throwing myself into things. It occurs to me that I am relieved to be free of it.

I will be abandoning this blog and starting a new one just for myself. I am going to ban myself from TwoPlusTwo and hang up my hat when it comes to the poker world. I don't want any part in it anymore. And of course from all this, I have no doubt many people will think that I am guilty or that I am fleeing or that I'm a bad person or whatever. And to those people, I have no problem with you thinking what you think, but I respectfully ask that you keep those thoughts to yourself or on your forum of choice. But to those of you who think that despite all this shit, I just might be alright, I encourage you to follow my new blog. I will no longer be reachable by any other means and I will no longer be engaging the poker world. You can find this blog here: http://inanitylane.blogspot.com/ , as well as a way to contact me. The only further engagement I will have with this whole affair is working with those directly involved including the victims and trying to get a hold of Jose himself. I hope that you all will have the grace not to contact me about any of this, as I have already said I have no desire to try to defend myself or engage this mess any further. I just want some peace. But if you are genuinely interested in speaking to me or possibly even meeting me on my travels, then I look forward to your contact.

Someday in the not-too-far-away future, I will be writing a book about all of this and more.

I imagine for the vast majority of you, if you will not be following me in the rest of my adventures, this is where we part ways. I want to say to you, thank you for everything. Despite all of the crap that poker has put me through, I have learned a lot. Goodbye, and I truly hope you all will be well and happy.

For those who will follow me, I welcome each and every one of you. And I hope to learn even more.

- Haseeb "INTERNETPOKERS", "Dog Is Head" Qureshi

Needless to say, this has been a pretty fucking absurd week. TwoPlusTwo has exploded since the scam involving Girah has gone public. Jungle and I have just arrived in a friend's flat in London and have finally managed to grab hold of internet (our phones don't get data outside of the US) and read over the shit in the thread. We've been without sleep and have barely put our shit down before looking over the thread and seeing how it's exploded. Of course, given things have evolved the way they have (and against the advice of my friends), I'm going to write as much as I can explaining the entire story about Girah and my relationship with him before I go to bed. I'm going to start from the very beginning - so read closely NVG. This is all the fodder you're going to get. This is going to be long as hell and as thorough as can be, and I'm probably not going to try to edit this for continuity or fluidity, so brace yourself and enjoy the drama.


How I met Jose


Jose came to me a long time ago, sometime last year when I was taking a break from poker after getting hacked in January. He had seen my videos and read my forum posts and told me he was a big fan of mine and wanted coaching. At the time I wasn't coaching any poker and was just going to school and had distanced myself from the poker world, so I told him he should contact Jungleman if he wanted some NL coaching. He told me his story about his meteoric rise in poker - about going from nothing to several hundred thousand dollars in only 6 months (or something like that, I don't remember the exact details). I remember talking to Sauce and a few other people, saying that I couldn't believe in this day and age that somebody could do that - back in 2006 it would've been exceptional, but in 2010 it was downright amazing.

Jose talked to me a lot after that, though we didn't talk much poker. He mostly spoke to me about his life and about more general things relating to poker. I taught him the importance of having a good poker network to learn from and talk strategy with - I told him that was an important part of growing as a player, since when I met him the only players he was discussing poker with were worse than him. He would complain to me about 10 buyin downswings - I told him those were nothing, and as he moved up he would start facing some real and difficult downswings that would challenge his confidence. He revealed to me that he'd never had more than 15bi downswing in his entire career, which blew me away. I told him once he stops running so hot, he was in for a shock. I heard about these shocks when his shots at 200/400 went poorly. He often asked me for advice about issues in his real life, about his personal relationship with money and with poker, about ego and aspirations as they related to his poker game. He seemed like a burgeoning young poker player, and nobody I know who spoke to him regularly (quite a few people at the time) thought otherwise. Everybody was amazed by this kid. He would sometimes send me hands as well and I'd comment on them as best I could, but my 6-max NL game is pretty rusty, as I play almost exclusively heads up. But I could tell he was a very sharp and fastidious thinker.

I was honestly inspired by his work ethic, his drive, and his studiousness. I have no problem saying that even now. I took a strong liking to the kid. And when he told me about how he his uncle offered to help him invest money into a house (since he was 17 at the time and couldn't do much with the money he had made), I advised him to be very careful who he trusted outside of his immediate family. He said he trusted his uncle like a father. And a couple of months later, I talked him through his feelings when he learned that his uncle had taken the 300k (or whatever it was) and skipped town.
Jose is real. His story is real. He really did make a fuckton of money, he came to all of these high stakes players before any of this shit happened, and it's really clear that he ran exceptionally hot to make so much money in such a short amount of time, but also that he is a very good poker player etc. etc. He is not the best, and I'm sure that his skill was built up by all of the hype to be larger than it actually was, but he is undoubtedly a very good poker player. Any and all conspiracy theories of Jose being completely invented as a puppet account are not only utterly false, but completely fucking ridiculous on many levels.

Anyway, that leads me to the next part of my involvement with Jose.



Jose's breakthrough


When the thread came out on 2p2 about some guy looking for a Portuguese Poker Prodigy kid, etc. etc., my initial thought was that he was referring to Jose. When I read all of the thread, although some of the details seemed a little off, I couldn't imagine that there were two people with the exact same story. And soon enough, I had Jose blowing up my my Skype saying that he had become famous, that somebody had made a thread about him, etc.

I told him that this was an amazing turn of events for him - the way this guy was building hype about searching for this young Portuguese prodigy, I told him that if you play your cards right, you can launch a pretty amazing career out of this, especially since the European market is growing and has a shortage of poker pros, he was positioned perfectly for a big break. He didn't have much know-how when it came to the poker world, so I told him to get an agent, reference the thread looking for him, and try to build his career using that as a launching pad. I remember him being extremely excited. I think the idea of becoming famous in some way was probably more valuable to him than the money he had already won.

This is where I start to get more deeply involved with Jose. When Jose contacted the big poker agencies, I told him to grill his prospective agents as hard as he could on what exactly they would be able to offer him and what strategy they would take in building his career. But in the end after talking to a number of big poker agents, he came to me and told me that he wanted me to be his agent instead, because he told me that I had a sharper mind and a better grasp on the poker world than the other people he spoke to. I was very flattered by the offer, but at first I told him I couldn't agree to that - I had my own career and responsibilities to worry about, but I told him I'd have no problem offering him advice from the sidelines. But after reconsidering it and talking it over with some friends, I decided to accept on the caveat that I would only help him out on the online end of his career. I told him, I can't really be your agent - I don't think I have the credentials, connections, experience, or time to commit to something like that. I can't in good faith say that it's a good idea for you to take me on in that capacity. But as I've never done something like this, I like you and want to help you, and I think I'll learn a lot from working with you - I told him I'd be willing to help you get your foot in the door and advise you through the start of your career.

We were intending to work out payment, but we never really agreed on anything specific. At times it was suggested that I'd receive a cut of his coaching winnings as he always told me he was very excited about becoming a poker coach. But again, we never agreed on anything exact, just randomly he'd let me know that he'd give me 1k for doing this or 2k for doing that (usually helping him write stuff). I've not received any money from him as of yet. I was never worried about it.


Working with Jose


Anyway, I told Jose the first thing to do was to come out and tell his story for all to see. I knew it'd be amazing enough that he would be able to make a lot happen, but I never imagined it would blow up as a big as it did. I was amazed when it even got 30,000 views, much less 300,000.

Jose had always told me that he was a big fan of my writing. He used to say that my writing reminded him of F. Scott Fitzgerald (which I thought was ridiculous) and say that he had always wanted me to write about him as well. He saw this as a chance to indulge I think. He was always something of a narcissist - but at 18, that's not surprising. Most poker players are. He asked me to write his story for him, he said he wanted it to be a sweeping and amazing tale about a young man creating his own legacy, blah blah blah. I told him, haha, no. I'm not going to write your damn story for you. He pleaded and pleaded, and finally I said, alright, you write your story, give me all of the details you want to include, and I'll spruce it up and make it nice and fluid.

He sent me his rough copy of his OP, which was okay but could be rearranged and improved quite a bit. I worked with him over a few days (he was a very meticulous complainer about the little things he didn't like or thought weren't quite perfect) and interviewed him for more content until I thought the story was nicely fleshed out, and then I sent him the final version of my draft. I told him - once you create this story, you're going to become known as the new big poker player on the block, so you'll need to have one online monicker for people to know you by. What screenname do you want to use? He said that he didn't want to use any of his screennames, as his lawyer instructed him to keep his underage screennames out of the public light. I asked him, then what do you want to go by? Jose? Macedo?

He thought about it for some time. After a couple of days, he told me he wanted to be known as Girah. I asked him what it was, but he wouldn't tell me, just that it was an inside joke. A couple weeks later I remember he ended up telling me - Girah was something that he and his teammates would say in the locker room. I can't remember what the hell it was about, only that it was really gay sounding and that he was embarrassed to admit it because he knew I'd make fun of him for it (and of course I did). Btw, as to those people who say that I know that "girah" is some ancient Indian word for some obscure unit of measurement - get a grip. I'm Pakistani, not Indian, and I can barely speak conversational Urdu.

Anyway, the story breaks and I advise Jose throughout all of it. How to deal with the media, what to tell people, how to carry himself, to ignore the NVGtards and the haters and to just keep doing his own thing and respecting his own success. Jungle, Sauce and I all ended up posting in the thread vouching for him, or more specifically, congratulating him on his success, as we all really wanted to see him succeed and build a career and name for himself. We all had a ton of faith in the kid. It made me really happy to see him getting so much success.

Of course a common question among all of this has been on the veracity of his results. His results were not fake. They were all real, and I made sure of that when I agreed to write his post and include with it the stats he showed. He told me that he could prove that he had 1+ million in winnings but spread over many different computers and accounts. I told him that if he had that, then not to write the blog post until he could include with it an HEM screenshot of all of his winnings, otherwise no one would believe him. I told him how to export databases, how to upload screenshots, etc. I certainly wouldn't have allowed him to publish something like that if it weren't true. I believed it then and I believe it now.

So, I did a lot of odds and ends in helping the kid's career move forward. I set him up a website domain and helped him find a web designer to create his website, I edited his blog posts and always encouraged him to tweet, blog, post on 2p2 etc. regularly to keep his fans happy. I never wrote anything from scratch for him although he often asked me to, but I told him if it doesn't come from your voice it's going to sound fake or contrived. But almost everything that he wrote he asked me to tidy up or for advice on things to add or subtract. I was more actively taking on a role as a big brother / mentor, giving him advice in his life, in career, and in poker.


Backing Jose


Around the same time as all of this was happening, he was running really bad in poker. After getting scammed by his uncle, he panicked and cashed out a lot of money to purchase a big house and didn't keep much money online. He started to ask around with some high stakes people he really respected if they'd be willing to stake and coach him. This is actually not uncommon - I've seen a lot of really good players do this for a while when they downswing and lose confidence, and then quit the stake once they are feeling better about themselves or about poker. I thought it was a really good opportunity, as I knew Jose was crushing 6-max with a huge winrate, and figured he was only going to improve his game more and more. I asked several people if they'd be interested in staking him, and eventually Jungle and I decided to go ahead and stake him. He asked that the stake be kept private, and we agreed and intended to keep it that way. This is obviously a very common request and we intended to honor it.

Now, I've been trying my best to ignore some of the conspiracy theories on 2p2, but it seems I have to respond to this one because it's been so prevalent. People seem to think that either Jungle or I were using Jose's account to play poker on. The answer is emphatically, no we didn't.

1) Neither he nor I are 6-max players, we both play heads up, whereas Jose plays primarily 6-max
2) Majority of Jose's play on our stake was at 5/10
3) There were obviously TONS of times that both he, I, and Jungle were playing online poker simultaneously
4) Numerous people, including EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO GOT SCAMMED will testify that Jose is a real person, really plays poker, is good enough to beat the stakes he plays, etc.

That being said, over the next few months Jose began issuing more and more big challenges. He wanted to play the Isildur challenge, the Durrrr challenge, and so on. I told him that he could play them if he wanted to, but we certainly wouldn't be taking his action on those. But I remember telling him - asking to play the Durrrr challenge is whatever, because there's no way Durrrr will play you anyway until he wraps up his other challenges. But if you're going to ask to play the Isildur challenge, it may be worth the -EV for you, just because of how much hype it will build for you. I told him if he could scrounge up the cash, it'd be worth it in career EV. But none of us thought that Jose had an edge on Isildur. And for those of you who think that we were going to somehow conspire with Jose on that count - Jose offered in his Isildur thread (look it up) that when he played the Isildur challenge, to do so ON WEBCAM. So there'd obviously be no way he could cheat once he made that offer. A lot of idiots are suggesting this, so I wanted to put that to rest.


Jose's disqualification and my iPoker account


I got Jose disqualified from the Bluff Challenge. I was bored after Black Friday and hadn't played any poker in a while. I didn't have a Merge account and couldn't play any poker at all, so I asked Jose to let me onto his Lock account (I didn't have one myself) to play some PLO and assured him that I was taking all of the losses for myself. He said this was fine, and sometime when he was sleeping I played some 25/50 and lost some several buyins pretty quickly. I didn't at the time perceive it as a big deal, since I figured if I took the time and went through the process of making a new account on Lock myself, probably even more people would've been willing to play me at PLO than would be willing to play Jose's account. In fact, I didn't really know anything about the Bluff Challenge that was going on at the time. I lost several buyins pretty quickly on some flips and then quit.

Obviously, it was very wrong of me to do that, on several levels. It's one of those things that happens and that everybody does and has been guilty of at one time or another, but yes, I acknowledge that it was wrong. But when Jose got disqualified from the Bluff Challenge, it exploded on a whole other level. I felt really ashamed of doing this and possibly fucking up Jose's career, and in the proceeding few days I did what I could to help him deal with the public response and the explosion of outrage. I think he felt very indebted to me despite the fact that I had screwed things up for him, and told me that he would do what he could to protect me because he didn't think I really had done anything wrong. I felt his compassion towards me and it made me feel very comfortable with him.

Regarding the Toshisan account in Canada - this is indeed my account. I set this up a while ago using a P.O.Box in Canada, but had stopped playing on it for a long time. It was mostly sitting inactive. When Jose asked me to help him get an iPoker account funded because Lock was having liquidity/cashout issues (where he had almost all of his online money at the time), I told him I'd try to get somebody to get funds onto my old Toshisan account and he could use that until he could cashout and get money onto iPoker for himself (among other sites; I always told him, being a European, he should be playing as many sites as he possibly can for game selection). As a staker/stakee relationship, yes, it's somewhat shady, but again not uncommon. Toshisan was not an account with any profile or reputation, so I figured it was fine for him to use it under our stake.

As far as us living together, me, Jungle, and Jose had always been planning to live together for some time. He was originally supposed to come hang out with us while we were in Vegas since we both wanted to meet him in person, but those plans ended up falling through since he was busy with his final exams. So when we decided we were going to move to Portugal, I thought since Jose was a local, it would be really good for us on many levels. First, he knew Lisbon well and knew lots of people there and of course could help us get set up, settled in, and knew the language. Second, I thought Jose would grow up a lot if he left his mother and was living out on his own, and of course he would learn a lot from both of us in terms of his poker game. Third, I figured it'd be really good for Jungle to have somebody to mentor who looked up to him as Jose did. And I thought that Jose's rigor and raw studiousness would be good for me to help keep my nose to the grindstone and spend more time studying and working on my poker game. It seemed like a perfect fit, and I always imagined it would be a lot of fun. (The whole Canada/Brazil/Portugal thing if you follow my blog you'll know all the details)


How the Scam Unfolded


Well, I guess technically the first I heard of this scam was when Jungle told me in passing that he heard from someone (KJemmy) that Jose might be scamming people. I totally ignored it, because it sounded ridiculous, and 2p2 and whatnot were so rampant with conspiracy theories and utter stupidity that I thought it was just an offshoot of that crap. And the second time that I unwittingly brushed against it was when Jose messaged me on Skype, telling me that there was this fish at 50/100 who had a huge VPIP and 3-bet but played decent postflop, asking if we wanted his action against him. I said yeah sure, of course we do. And a couple days later, he tells us that he lost a couple buyins to this fish at 25/50. I say it's fine, don't worry about it, just no more 25/50 for a while - I tell him just grind some more 5/10 and try to run good for once.

But my end of the story really begins 4 days ago, the night before I left on my flight for London. I was procrastinating on packing all of my stuff and planning to stay awake all night for my flight that was departing at 10AM, so I'd be able to sleep through my 10 hour flight. I had spent some time dealing with the goodbyes with my family (my mother bawls her eyes out every time I tell her I'm going away for a while). I remember very clearly as I was heading back upstairs, I got an e-mail on my phone which read as follows:

Subj: im quitting poker and giving my money away to charity


just wrote the statement, im quitting poker, i hate the fame. i helped my degen rich best friend get setup on sites and i sweated ppl while he played them and he lost against some won vs others, broke about even net but everyone thinks i was superusing them. i played him myself cuz hes such a degen and lost but no one believes me. everyone thinks im some kinda fucking scammer, i dont know what to do but i know i dont want to be involved in poker anymore or ever again


I read this, and my only reaction was "lolwtf". So I went upstairs and called him on Skype to see what the fuck this was all about. This wasn't the first time that Jose had sort of flipped out like this about quitting poker. Actually, Jose was in makeup to Jungle and I by quite a bit - over 50k iirc. He always showed us his EV graphs which showed him running way under EV, and every time we cleared him to take higher stakes shots they seemed to go poorly. So I remember another time previously while I was in San Francisco, I randomly got a message from him saying he was quitting poker because he hates it and he runs so bad, and that time too I had to talk him down and reassure him that it was ok, he was still good, and that we were still happy to stake him and that we weren't worried about it. It always seemed to bother him tremendously to be in makeup to us.

Well, anyway, back to the story. So I call him up on Skype and say "Ok Jose, this better be good because I'm in the process of packing up my entire life and I have to drive to the airport in 5-6 hours and the A/C is broken and I'm exhausted. Tell me what's going on." Strangely, he refuses to speak to me. We talk on Skype all the time, but when I tell him to call me on Skype, he says no, just chat. I finally say, "ok, dude, just let me call you and I'll talk via Skype and you type to me ok? You don't have to say anything." He lets a call through and I ask him what's going on.

He tells me the story about his friend who's some rich fish who he's been helping out and blah blah blah, people think it's him and his friend has actually scammed HIM too, etc. etc. Basically the same story he told other people. To me all of this sounds pretty bizarre as you can imagine, but I have 100% trust in Jose, so I know it has to be some really weird misunderstanding. Jose is still typing and is getting pretty anxious, typing stuff like "if they think I scammed them then I'm going to lose my career, I would rather quit poker than let that happen." I finally get annoyed with him typing and tell him to knock it off and speak back to me, which he finally does. He is very quiet and reserved - I can tell he's very jostled. I ask him on the details of who's accusing him and what their evidence is, but he doesn't tell me much specifically. I tell him okay, if you didn't do anything wrong then this can be cleared up no problem, you just need to calm the fuck down and rest assured that everything is going to be alright.

I tell him to invite me into a group chat with whoever's accusing him so I can get their side of the situation. He invites me into a conversation with Nick (I don't know his 2p2 name, but he's the first guy who basically confronted Jose and who Jose sort of slipped up with). Nick, Jose and I all get on a call together and start talking. I, as calmly and objectively as I can be, ask for Nick's side of the story, what the evidence is against Jose, so on and so forth. I point out that Jose has no incentive whatever to scam people for such a small amount of money, that he has too much to lose, that he's too smart to do something like that for such a small amount of money, especially in such an obvious way, etc. Nick agrees completely. But then he starts telling me all sorts of shit - Jose trying to get people to play against Dollarman and Sauron, the simultaneous timeouts, the uncannily perfect play in some hands, etc. I am pretty surprised by how solid it is, so I ask him to show me all of the suspicious hands that he has against Dollarman or Sauron. He shows us a few where Dollarman checks back KQ vs AK on KJxx9 (in a spot where QT was extremely unlikely) and a spot where Dollarman folds to a river shove on KJ9Q9 where Dollarman pots river, hero (spew)shoves ace high and Dollarman folds in a spot where Dollarman seemingly would've had to have total air that floated the flop to play that way. I point out that 88, QJ or AJ are also plausible hands to play that way and say although some of these hands look fishy, they're definitely inconclusive.

Jose assures us that this is all his friend's doing and his friend can get hand histories from Lock that show everything, and that he'll even fly his friend out to go visit his accusers to prove he's real, and so on and so forth. He demonstrates the utmost confidence that he will exonerate himself. But the point at which I start to become unsure is while I am speaking to Nick and basically telling him that once we get Jose to send us the hands (I say they have to be forwarded from Lock support to ensure there's no tampering), we will be able to see very clearly whether or not there was any foul play. It will be clear as day with the full hand histories.

Around this time, Jose is very quiet, and interjects sheepishly... "you guys are going to post this on 2p2 to punish me right? That's the reason for putting it on 2p2 isn't it?" Nick replies "Well... I don't know Jose... we don't know if we're going to do it yet..." "Well then why won't you just let me quit? If I just quit poker and promise to never play again, then that's enough punishment isn't it? Why do you want to punish me more?" Nick is dumbfounded and doesn't know how to reply. I tell him "Well, we're not even at that stage yet. First we need to look at the hand histories and see what's going on." But at this point, I have a really bad feeling in my gut. Ironically, by the end of the conversation Nick seems to have largely turned around and doesn't think that Jose could possibly have had any incentive to do this or cheat anyone. He seems to now believe that Jose will be exonerated and that things will turn out okay - "we won't post anything on 2p2 unless we're absolutely 100% sure about everything", he assures Jose. As we hang up the call, my casual confidence was replaced with a sinking feeling that Jose was guilty.


I called him immediately afterwards, and was very careful with my words at first. He kept asking me if they would let him just quit poker instead, why not, why not, he'd say. And after a minute of this, I asked him point-blank, "Jose, did you cheat?" "No," he said emphatically. "Because if you did, you need to tell me now. All of this will be a whole lot better for you if you tell me now than if you try to hide this." "What, do you think I cheated? Do you not believe me?" "Well Jose, the evidence that he gave was pretty fucking strong. And I could tell by your voice and the way you were talking that something was wrong. I know you Jose. Tell me the truth. You did it, didn't you."

He was silent.

"Are you going to tell me?" I said.

"Yes."

"Yes what?" I said. "Yes you're going to tell me or yes you did it?"

"Yes, I did it."

"Jesus fucking Christ."

What went on after that was a long and arduous interrogation where I tried to get all of the facts out of him. I wanted to know all of the truth of what went on and exactly what he did, and I kept telling him that he needed to tell me absolutely EVERYTHING. I remember asking him.

"Why did you do it Jose?"

He paused, and said "I don't know."

"What the fuck do you mean you don't know?"

"I don't know..." He sounded very scared.

I searched my understanding of this kid, who he was and how I knew him, and tried to imagine what could make him do something so stupid and despicable as scamming his friends and lying about it. I asked him "was it just that you were tired of losing? That you wanted to finally win something? Is that why?"

"I don't know... I think so. Maybe." He sounded very unsure, as though he just wanted me to stop asking him questions.

"Well you know, you fucked up really bad man. I don't know why you did this, and you're a fucking idiot to do this, but you can't undo it now. You've fucked up and need to acknowledge that.""I know, I know. What do I do?" he asked eagerly. I didn't believe his "I know"s, but I still had compassion for the kid. I knew he had made a colossal mistake, and he needed to know how to face up to it, to stare it in the eye and admit that it was his. I've made enough mistakes in my life to know how difficult that is.

"Look, what you told me you told me in confidence. But you need to own up to this now Jose. You've fucked up, and you need to come to them and tell them the truth. You need to be a man about this, and admit to everything. And it's not easy, I know it's not easy, and you're going to be in for a long road after this, but that's part of being a man and facing the music when you fuck up."
He denied this immediately. He insisted that there was some way out.

"No Jose. There is nothing. You've painted yourself into a corner with all of these lies you've been telling these people."

"There has to be something. If I tell them I'm going to quit poker, then they will let me go won't they? I know they will. I know them Dog, they care about me, they're my friends, they don't want to hurt me."

I told him then as I told him several times during that conversation - "Jose, shut the fuck up."He began getting more and more anxious and desperate. I told him he needed to come clean about everything, that he needed to tell everyone the truth. As I started gathering more details about the specifics of what he did and to whom, I caught him in a few more minor lies which made me really angry. I told him - if you're going to lie to me too, then I'm done with this shit Jose. He apologized hurriedly and claimed that his memory about certain things were hazy. Writing all this, it baffles me that it took me as long to stop feeling compassion for him as I did. But although I knew he was frantic and full of shit, I also knew I was still on his side. I believed that deep down he was a good kid who had lost his way, and making this mistake was part of what it would take for him to grow up and learn. At that point, he was still just a stupid kid who had stolen some candy from the store. I couldn't yet wrap my mind around the entirety of it - of the fact that he had arranged an elaborate method to scam his friends, that he was lying to them and me and building lie after lie, that he'd been planning and perpetuating all of this for weeks - it was too hard to understand Jose as someone who would do that. I don't honestly think it sunk in that he could really do something like that until a few days later.

He started to make suggestions about killing himself - nothing outright, but dropping obvious references to it, saying things like maybe he should just drive his bike off a cliff and go out in a blaze of glory. I told him not to joke about it and got really angry. He started to become resigned to this becoming public and was talking more and more as though his career was already over. I told him he needs to not say another word to anyone until he's ready to confess and say everything. But the last I heard of him before he logged off Skype, he was still vehemently insisting that there was some other way out of this, that I didn't see everything. The last thing he said before he logged off Skype was that he was going for a bike ride. It was still 3:30 AM and I had yet to pack for my flight.


Breaking his Scam to the Group


At this point, I didn't believe that Jose would have the balls to own up to this. And the more he thrashed and made excuses, the more I was convinced that I had to tell them myself rather than wait in vain for him to confess. After I had spoken to Nick, he invited me into a group chat with all of his HU group sans Jose, since I asked him to keep me posted about the investigation before I left. I steeled myself, and started talking to the group and telling them everything I knew - the contents of which have for the most part already been posted on 2p2, so you can read them there. Obviously those logs were intended to be private, but now that they've been posted in a public forum I'm going to do what I can to explain the breadth of them. The remainder of this blog will be in point format replying to specific remarks related to what has gone on on 2p2 as far as I've read it.

1. The first and most obvious thing is that as soon as this scam was uncovered, I did what I could to inform everyone within the group of what was going on. I relayed to them everything that Jose had told me and as I was flying around from Austin to Dallas to London to Malaga, I repeatedly logged into Skype when I could to keep tabs with the group and kept calling Jose's phone to try to get back into contact with him (he disappeared for a while after that first conversation). By intervening as I did, I figured that I had taken it on this debacle as my responsibility, since the people in the group trusted me and saw me as somebody with control over Jose when he had distanced himself from them, and Jose trusted me and would (sometimes) do what I told him to.I was also in contact with Jose and advising him as strongly as I could to contact his sponsors and let them know that this scandal was going to break, to tell his mother and girlfriend what he had done, and to prepare a public statement.

(Note: I did not write his last statement)

2. I originally did not want this to go public for several reasons. The first and foremost was that soon after all of this happened (not immediately), I realized that Jose had also involved us in the Dollarman scam. This occurred to me I think on my flight to Malaga that I remembered the messages he had sent me before about it. This is something that I never intended to air publicly or let anyone know other than me, Jungle, and Jose, for several reasons. First, if Jose immediately lost his Lock sponsorship, there was a distinct possibility that they would seize all of his funds (which were mostly ours). Second, if this goes public, Jose might pull a runner anyway and fuck us on our stake money. Third, I knew that the moment I brought up the fact that Jose had pulled this shit on us as well and brought into question the integrity of our relationship, I wouldn't be able to predict how he'd act towards me or Jungle and how much control we'd have over the situation. The point at which he stops cooperating with us is the point at which we lose the upper hand. So I wanted to be very careful when and how I brought it up.

This was a concern that I couldn't voice to the group, because I knew that they were in contact with Jose as well (and they would probably become even more bloodthirsty and pissed off if they knew Jose had done it to us as well). I knew if I spooked him both Jungle and I would be fucked. So I wanted them to hold off or possibly not go public at all so that Jungle and I could get our money back and make our way out of this situation. Now that things have reached this point, obviously I have to go out and say this to protect my reputation, which is worth more to me than the equity that we had in Jose's account. So, yes, this kinda sucks.

3. But those who are suggesting that I had an emotional attachment to Jose are right as well. You might ask why would you feel sorry for somebody who's so clearly done something scummy? Well, the last people I'm going to expect to understand some explanation of this are NVGers, so I'm not going to bother. But I also have enough self-respect to admit that yes, at least when I first heard his confession, I did genuinely feel compassion for Jose and didn't want his career/life ruined by his mistake, at least not permanently. That obviously went away the more I learned about all of this, but I won't say it wasn't there and motivating me initially. Make of that what you will, I don't really care.

4. Yes, Jungle and I wanted to cover our asses from the impending hurricane of NVG stupidity. While I was in the Dallas airport, I assured everyone involved that if Jose was still alive (an important contingency) then we would ensure that he paid out whatever was owed by the scammed individuals. He also promised this himself early on. Honestly, a lot of the reason that I promised this is because I knew that Jose would pay people out anyway, but also because I didn't want the people in the group to become hysterical that Jose would pull a runner and not pay anyone. I figured that if I committed myself to that promise, Jose wouldn't have the balls to pussy out and make me pay, and also that the group was more at rest. But yes, I think emotionally I was also still playing out the big brother role that I hadn't yet abandoned yet at that point.

When Jose's Lock account got locked once we reached Gibraltar and I spoke with Jungle in person, we agreed that we should pay via bank wire to ensure that everyone involved received their funds immediately without worry. We wanted to be as amenable as we could to those who got scammed, recognizing that we were in a position of authority, and spent most of that night cursing Jose for being so fucking stupid and working out the details with the group.

The group made several promises to us to be as vague as possible about our involvement in all of this. We knew given the stupidity that runs rampant on NVG that once this scandal broke we would have to deal with a huge shitstorm of accusations and conspiracy theories if our names were tied to this story. Well, turns out we probably made a pretty bad decision there, since the way our names leaked out ended up being a lot more sensational than the truth, so it caused this whole debacle. Figures.

5. I don't know why Jose did it. I really don't. I wish I knew, I wish I could make some sense of it, but I can't. He's a fucking idiot. My friends have warned me repeatedly not to throw him under the bus though for a number of reasons, but everything that has unfolded on 2p2 has left me with no choice. The person I knew 5 days ago seems totally different from the person I see Jose as now. To be honest, it wasn't until I heard about him running the same scam on Sauce that it hit me that this wasn't just a momentary lapse of judgment, but a calculated plan, and that Jose was just truly a piece of shit.

6. Oh, and anyone who's saying that I was trying to "muddy Sauce" - shut the fuck up.

7. Lastly, just wanted to say that Ashton tweeted all of that while we were on a plane to London from Malaga. He had not spoken to us and did not know most of the details of this story.

Addenda:

8. I suppose it's also worth mentioning that yes, we vouched for Jose. We made a mistake to do so. That was also part of the reason that we felt that we should make sure that everyone gets paid out and that this situation gets resolved, but there were more factors than that. We made a big mistake in trusting him and are obviously paying the cost.

9. Yes, Jungle and I are angry. We are very, very angry. You can probably tell from the tone of most of this blog actually, haha. Half of our conversations over the last four days have been interrupted with random "why did he do it?"s and "god, that stupid fucking kid"s. We have been in touch with Jose, we've been in touch with the people who were affected by the scam, and that's as far as our anger needs to go. We have no business airing it out on a public forum, so please stop trying to tell us that we're not angry.

So there. Now you know everything there is to know. Now calm the fuck down, pack up the drama, and let's call it a night.

Haseeb



Edit: Looking back on this blog after waking up, I wish that I had slept on it before writing some of the things I have to be honest. Here I have confessed to the entire story and everything that I've taken part in, and I will not waver in standing by it. I did some things that were very wrong, and did some things that I think were very much the right thing to do which you may disagree with. But all of it I will own up to as my own. That's all I wanted to say.

Hey guys,

A lot has happened in the last week or so. Firstly, the seminar I did last week was a pretty big success. It had a huge turnout and I was really happy with the content and my delivery. It also ended up running 2 hours and fifteen minutes (because I thought a 90 minute seminar with 30 minute Q&A meant 2 hours total, haha). The reviews I got after it was over were crazy though. I had a couple of people even tell me that it was the best material on poker that they've ever seen and that I was discussing concepts they've never seen explained before. I don't know if the part about it being the best poker material ever is true, haha, but I have to say I'm really happy with how it turned out.

If you missed the seminar, Dailyvariance edited it and made it available for purchase. Go to this link and pick it up: http://www.dailyvariance.com/web-seminars/world-class-versus-mediocrity/ . (I've been told if you watch the seminar and decide it wasn't worth the investment, you can get 100% of your money back, no questions asked, so there's no risk). Poker philosophy and methods of improving are the sorts of things that I really don't discuss in videos, but I try to impart into my one-on-one coaching students. I think it is an invaluable part of being a professional poker player that is too often overlooked.

In other news, I'm sure many of you have heard by now that Jungle was denied access to Canada. It's a bit silly, but long story short, our plans to relocate to Vancouver have sort of been canned overnight. It's unfortunate, as I was really looking forward to experiencing Vancouver and hanging out with Galfond and company. But life when life throws you a curveball, all there is to do is try to hit the next one. Now our plans have reverted back to going to Portugal after all - most likely Lisbon. Jungle and I will be living with Jose "Girah" Macedo and will be flying out there sometime in the coming week.
I have no doubt that it's going to be an interesting excursion. I've never really been to Europe for any length of time. Well... I went to Paris for a week when I was 19, but I choose not to count that since it was a woefully myopic experience of the city. To be honest, I'm actually kind of happy that Vancouver was taken off of the table. I think going to Portugal will be a much more interesting and novel experience. That is to say, I think both Jungle and I will learn and grow a lot from living there. When it comes to adventure, my life philosophy is "say yes to everything." Of course, that comes with certain obvious caveats (e.g. I've never smoked a cigarette or snorted a line), but when it comes to life and experience I don't think you can ever know what will or won't make you grow as a person. I want to be the kind of man who will welcome new experiences, new people and places with open arms.

That's not to say I'm not talking out of my ass right now, that I'm not some kid who's just barely got his little hooks into life. I absolutely am! But fuck it, it's never too early to get your Ahab on.

WARNING: emotional laundry ahead. Try playing this to make it more bearable.




It's funny, I probably have a good idea of the kind of person I want to be now, probably clearer than I have ever have before. But at the same time when I compare myself to who I want to be, I see how I fall pitifully short. I think I'm the kind of person who oscillates between hating and loving himself. If you think about it, that's probably part of what drives me to be good at poker. We say that poker players are driven by their egos, and of course that's true for me too. But unlike many other poker players, I don't think what I am fighting for is the respect of others, but my own self-respect.
It's hard to feel as generous with other people as with yourself.

I was having a conversation with my good friend Steve the other day. It was 4AM and we were getting food at a late night diner after a long night out on the town. Steve is in recovery (NA) and was telling me how he was having trouble working on his fourth step. I didn't know much about the twelve step program so he explained to me. In the literature, the fourth step of recovery is to "make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves." What this means most simply is to make an honest account of all of our internal resentments, conflicts, and contradictions. I love the word "fearless." It occurs to me that I am full of fear.

Now, I'm not a drug addict, but the more I hear about the twelve steps, the more I see how much just about anyone could benefit from working through them. At the very least, just about every poker player I know is riddled somewhere in their core with conflicts and contradictions. And myself? Shit, I wouldn't know where to begin. I should charge myself the hour.

I remember telling him, "man, I think poker has fucked up my relationship with money. It's like, when I started playing poker I was 16 years old and couldn't touch anything I made, it was all imaginary money, even after I'd made my first 100K. Poker teaches you to be detached from your money, that it's just a means to an end. But the further I go through life the more I have trouble connecting my happiness with the money I make. In fact, it's usually the reverse."

"So why do you try so hard to make money?" he asked. Steve is probably one of the worst people with money I know - he's the kind of guy who'd be perfectly as happy sleeping on a floor as would be in a 5 star hotel.

"Well, it's for security isn't it? Security, freedom, independence. The ability to go on adventures and do whatever I want and never have to worry about it." Of all of the poker players I know, I'm actually one of the most frugal. I live my life relatively simply and avoid the excesses of most young nouveau riche. Steve knows this.

"Well that's bullshit," he interjected, "if you wanted right now you could sell your shit and travel the world and go on all sorts of adventures right now. What's stopping you? You're young, you have money, you have no responsibilities."

"Yeah, well..." I replied carefully, "it's not that simple."

He was right, and it was. But I continued, "If I convince myself of that, then I'll stop being motivated to be successful. Actually there's a phrase that I got from this author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He came up with this term "fuck-off money." Basically, he said that everyone has an amount of money at which if somebody called your phone at 6AM, you could pick it up and no matter who it is, say "fuck off" and hang up. That amount of money is your fuck-off money. So I'm just trying to get my fuck-off money, and that's what keeps my nose to the grindstone."

"And what'll you do when you get that amount of money?"

I considered this for a moment. I'm not sure I'd planned that far ahead. "I don't know, whatever I want to by the time I get there. I'm sure I'll be a totally different person on the other side." This was a copout, and I knew it.

"No, come on, that's bullshit."

"I don't know, I'll just be a writer. I'll travel around and go on adventures and do whatever. Fuck if I know."

"Then do that now!"

As usually happens in these sorts of conversations, I ran out of answers. He went on, "Really, almost all of the people I know who are happy are people who don't have money. It's the ones who have money who are anxious and miserable."

I notice that whenever I hear generalizations like this, my analytical gears star whirring and buzzing, figuring out what sort of fallacies or selection biases I can poke into them. I reply, "Well you know, I actually remember reading a psychological study the other day. It said that although most people tend to think that a person's happiness fluctuates throughout their lives - it might go down if you get into a car accident, but then shoot back up when you get married, and go way up when you win the lottery, and so on. People imagine their happiness graph as going up and down depending on what happens to them in life. But the reality, the study said, is that most people have a baseline of happiness in their lives. And although winning the lottery, or a death in the family might make your happiness shoot up or down for a certain period of time, over time it reverts back to normal. Whatever around you is just the status quo. So your happiness is determined by who you are and how you relate to the world, rather than what part of the world is around you."

Steve nodded in agreement. "That's so right. I agree completely. What's your point though?"

"Well, I think I must just be somebody who's inherently depressive. And maybe no matter what I do or how many things I get right, I'm just not going to be happy." He began to interject, but I cut him short, "and maybe that's okay! Maybe that's just part of who I am. And if that changes someday, cool, and if it doesn't, maybe not. But I have to live with it and be the best person I can be in spite of it."

"Haseeb, people can change."

"Yeah I know, I'm not saying they can't! I'm just saying that you have to be honest about yourself and who you are."

He sighed and leaned back in his chair, "You know Haseeb," he grumbled, looking off toward the window, "the thing that you'll learn someday is that life isn't about getting what you want.

It's about wanting what you have."


Haseeb

Hey guys,

Threw a video together here for my previous blog post's response. I try to elucidate the points I made at the end of the post and speak a little bit more about my seminar which is coming up in a couple days on Sunday, the 24th of July at 11AM PST.




Sign up for my seminar here: http://www.dailyvariance.com/theory-vs-play/

I hope to see you guys there!

P.S. Do I gesticulate like a madman during my videos? I can't tell.

Haseeb

Well I'm back in Austin, and I have to say, it's good to be home. I've now recouped a bit and washed all the degen off me, so I sat down at my desk to get to writing the blog post I promised. In my previous entry, I told people that I would write a blog post on a prompt chosen by my readers. So after checking out all the messages I got on Twitter (@INTERNETPOKERS) and the comments on here, it looks like prompt #2 won by a landslide: "on the difference between poker theory and poker play, and how they relate to study/practice." It's too bad, I was rooting for "how to play K motherfucking Q". I've got all sorts of top tips on how to raise preflop and stuff!

Well, grab a snack, buckle in, and brace yourself for some good ol' fashioned poker philosophy.

---


Let us Consider the Poker Player

We all know that the first and foremost goal of a poker player is to improve his game. Whether it be his playing, his studying, his staying up at night thinking about hands - a poker player is always in pursuit of the mastery of his craft. Well, poker players tend to be an unreflective bunch, so aside from a burning desire to bolster his ego, we might ask: what does it take to become a master of poker? If we are to consider this question, it is helpful to first define and understand mastery itself. For the purposes of this question, we shouldn't look at mastery solely in poker but at mastery in general, because our ideas and intuitions about poker may cloud our objective evaluation of its meaning. We should look at mastery generally, and see what we can learn from it about poker. What does mastery mean, and how is it attained?


The Definition of Mastery

The concept of mastery has been studied by many researchers through history and has featured extensively in literature. For our purposes we can define mastery simply as reaching the pinnacle of skill in some field. Looking at masters of chess, carpentry, music, or whatever, the persistent question arises - what does it take to become a master? What, if anything, do masters of their crafts have in common? Well, I'll save you the breadth of literature and examples, but if you are familiar with the book Outliers by popular author Malcolm Gladwell, you may have heard the phrase "10,000 hours of deliberate practice." Studies of masters of varying fields and crafts all seemed to point to this result - among other things, it seems that nearly everyone who achieved mastery of their craft needed to put in 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. It seems like a sensible result, but before we can translate this conclusion into poker we must take a close look at what is meant by "deliberate practice."

Deliberate practice is difficult to define because it can mean different things for different areas of expertise. But it's clear that anything that constitutes deliberate practice must share these characteristics: it must be a focused activity, it must be designed specifically to improve performance, it must be repetitious, it must give direct unambiguous feedback, and it must allow the practitioner to self-correct. The deliberate practice of any skill therefore ought to be designed for optimal, efficient conditioning. So if you devise a system of deliberate practice for poker, you must keep these criteria acutely in mind. What is the best and most efficient way to condition yourself to play better poker? Stop reading and think about this question for a moment. It's a vital question that we are likely to pass over all too easily.


The Two Skillsets of Poker

Poker is a mental game. It is easy to conclude that because of this, as long as two people reach the same idea in their mind then they can make the same play in a poker game. In a game that requires no real physical ability, it seems like there should be few barriers stopping one from arriving at the correct play. Of course this is in some sense technically true, but this truism can rapidly be stretched too thin. The reality (which few people acknowledge) is that although poker is in some sense a "mental game," it is not a game that has one uniform mental skill that we call "poker skill." Actually, there are two distinct skillsets in poker which comprise your poker skill on the whole.

The first skillset is poker theory, and the second skillset is poker play (i.e. your instincts/habits). We group these together casually and call it skill, but these two skillsets are actually distinct systems. In fact it is helpful to think of them as two separate mental pathways in your brain. That is, there are two fully compartmentalized neuronal systems that you are developing as you improve your skill in poker, and they must be maintained and improved in different ways.

Poker theory is self-explanatory. Poker theory is your ability to dissect hands in a vacuum, to talk about lines and discuss hypotheticals. It is, in short, to be able to come up with the "solution" to a hand. It's a puzzle-solving skill. You learn all of the tools, the lines, the sleights of language and the concepts that are supposed to lead to profitable plays, you fasten them together and you come up with good lines. You can imagine that if poker were taught in universities, what they'd learn would be called poker theory. The second skillset is very different - it is on the opposite end of the spectrum. Poker play is a set of habits and intuitions. It's more akin to muscle memory than mental maneuvering; it's clicking the right button out of three with a 2-3 second reaction time. It's seeing a flop and instantly interpreting what its texture means, or seeing a checkraise and instantly knowing it's not a common bluffing spot, or seeing AQo preflop and instantly knowing it's good to 3-bet. Poker play is what makes you unable to pull off that river checkraise bluff, or what makes you give up too many pots when you call 3-bets, even though you "know it's bad." Poker theory is the part of your brain that treats a poker hand as a puzzle; poker play is the part of your brain that treats it as an experience.

The Gulf between Theory and Play

It's easy as a poker player to think that there is a great deal of overlay and interaction between these two systems. You might think "well, the reason I 3-bet AQo preflop is because of all of the poker theory I've studied," but this is drawing causality after the fact. It's like saying that because you read your driver's manual, you take right turns on red lights. But the reality is, you take right turns automatically; the part of your brain that knows what's in a driver's manual is never called upon while you're actually driving. In fact, if you observe the way people actually play poker, the vast majority of spots that people think they are actively evaluating and thinking through, all they're really doing is recalling preconceived strategies. Poker theory is complex, while poker play is basic; poker play is not your ability to understand a sentence, but more like your ability to understand individual words. It is pre-lingual, so to speak. Poker theorizing is a more language-based and methodical process, rather than an intuitive one. Poker theory involves a series of steps, some mathematical and some conceptual, and it follows a distinct and (usually) logical process.

If you watch an experienced poker player playing even a fast-paced game of heads up poker, what you'll soon realize is that in less than of 10% of spots is there any true theorizing going on. And by that I mean - all that the player is really doing in those 90% of spots is sifting through their intuitions and all of the memories that arise through their experience; there is no methodical, logical re-evaluation of what's going on. If this player played this spot 100 times over, he would likely never arrive at a novel interpretation of the hand. That is not to say that he'd never make a different decision, but he would never truly reformulate his ideas on the hand, or invent anything new.

It's important not to see 90-10 disparity between actual play and poker theory as a personal failing on the part of average players, or worse yet, "the difference between grinders and great players" (a coinage which I find rather throwaway). This 90-10 gulf is actually true for everyone, great players included. And it's just how it should be! The conscious brain simply does not have the capacity to be actively computing so many complex poker problems. This is the only way your brain could handle processing hands at the rate at which you play them. Poker theorizing is a much more involved and careful mental process than poker playing is, so it's no wonder that we spend so little time during play doing it.


Bridging the Gap

You might think to yourself - "well, if my poker theory is totally separate from my actual poker play and I'm not even using my poker theory in more than 10% of my spots, then how can I improve the other 90% of my game?" It might seem as though there's a great dam holding back your poker theory from spreading into your poker play, since 90% of the time you're simply doing what your instincts and intuitions are already telling you, even if an examination of the poker theory you know would lead you otherwise. This phenomenon is why you see curiosities such as players who understand poker theory very well, yet can't beat the games; it also explains why these type of players far outnumber the really strong players with little grasp of theory. It is possible to become a great player with little understanding of poker theory, but it generally takes a lot of luck to happen upon a viable set of poker habits, and such players tend to not have much longevity (think Zigmund, etc.) since they don't have any grasp of poker theory to help them adjust to evolving games. You might even go so far as to say that the law of large numbers predicts both a lot of people who understand poker theory and suck at playing poker, and very few people who don't understand poker theory yet are demonstrably very good at poker. It is clear that both poles exist.

So how does one in the end overcome this dilemma? It's all well and good to call attention to this gulf between theory and play, but how do we breach it and try to improve that other 90% of our poker game? Well, it all comes back to deliberate practice. Remember, deliberate practice is the quickest and most efficient way of conditioning a skillset. But since there are two skillsets in poker, it would seem that there should actually be two forms of deliberate practice - one for theory, and one for play. What comprises deliberate practice for theory? Well, this should be obvious - reading poker books, discussing hands on forums, talking about poker, or even watching videos. All of this engages directly with the poker theory part of your brain (the part that treats poker hands as a puzzle). But what is there for poker play? If you look at the list we've assembled - you've almost exhausted all of the standard things that people jump to when they think about improving their poker games. Well, the truth is, usually when people talk about improving their poker games, what they really mean would be more precisely that they are working on improving their poker theory. Poker theory is far more accessible to the conscious brain for conditioning, re-evaluation, and molding, since it is localized on a more conscious and rational level of thought.

Deliberate Performance

The question remains - what constitutes deliberate practice for poker play? As accords the definition we stated before for deliberate practice, it must be something that actively conditions our intuitions, is repetitive, self-correcting, etc. Well, here's the catch-22 - in poker, there is no difference between practice and performance. Practice IS performance. In most activities, one can break down the action into discrete steps and practice on simplified subsections of the overall activity. Think of a concert pianist repeating a certain coda, or a chess player examining a board and simulating various outcomes. In poker, this is not possible. Because poker is a game played for money, you can hardly play a 400NL game to practice for 400NL (since it would be itself the performance, since the same money would be on the line), and you certainly can't play a 100NL game to practice for a 400NL game, because the player pool and difficulty is different. If you could, poker would be a very different sort of game, but such is the unfortunate reality. Deliberate practice in poker is actually very hard to achieve, which is why for a game with such high monetary stakes, there are so few true masters of the game. Compared to something like chess or even music, it seems almost preposterous that relatively few players can play poker on a high level. The bottom line is, all of this makes it very clear that it's possible to learn and even become good at poker theory, but it is exceedingly difficult to become good at poker.

This article is running long and it's getting late, so I'll cut to the money-shot: what's the bottom line? How should you set up your poker studying or poker habits to best condition your poker playing? Well, since deliberate practice is no different from performance for poker play, the answer is twofold: our first goal should be to make our performance more like deliberate practice. The second goal is to try to create more interplay between your poker theory and your poker play.


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Now, unfortunately it's been a few days since I've been banging out this article and it's gotten pretty long. I could go into a lot more detail about how to develop good study habits in poker, but that's a whole topic on its own. But if you're interested in learning, I've decided I will be doing an online seminar on the topic.

As I was working on this article, I showed it to my good friend Tri Nguyen (aka Slowhabit) for his thoughts, and he suggested that I try doing a web seminar on this topic. He told me a lot of people would find it very interesting, and that I'm known from my videos as being an engaging speaker. I've never done a proper web seminar before but I really enjoy teaching, and this is a topic that I'm passionate about that doesn't seem to get much play in the common poker discourse.

Go to this link and sign up: http://www.dailyvariance.com/theory-vs-play/ for my seminar, which will be July 24th, 2011 at 11AM PST. If you sign up now, you will receive some free audio (check out more details on the site). *** My web seminar comes with a 100% Risk-Free Guarantee. If you are not satisfied - for any reason at all - ask for a full refund! No questions asked. *** It's about 5 days from now, which will give me some time to prepare in-depth material on the topic and go further down the rabbit-hole of breaking down the interplay between theory and play in studying poker. I am going to look at specific studying habits that high-stakes players use to improve their poker play, and various techniques that I teach my students which will make reviewing hands and sessions much more effective. If you don't want to check it out then don't of course, I don't want to make my blog all lame and commercial-y, but I'm actually kind of excited about this project and I hope to make it worth it. But I'll do my best not to blast it into your ears with a megaphone.

Over the next few days I'll be preparing some material to use in my seminar, also trying to research real estate in Vancouver. If anyone has any good tips on Vancouver living, let me know... but it looks like the prices in downtown Vancouver are pretty steep, haha. I guess that's to be expected.


Oh, and check out this song. Sweet Jesus on a pogo stick!





Thanks for reading,

Haseeb

Hey guys,

I'm writing this in complete dark, waiting for sleepiness to knock on my door. It's my last night in Vegas and it's been a hell of an experience. I managed to play all of one event (just the main, which I gloriously busted on day one), have met a ton of really cool people, and have managed to ONCE AGAIN change my travel plans. Long story short, Jman (Phil Galfond) and his good friend Don (SoCalQuest) invited Jungleman, Jose (the Portuguese poker prodigy) and I to live with them in Vancouver, Canada. For the longest time Phil Galfond has been a personal hero of mine. I don't tend to idolize a lot of poker players, but I've always looked up to him, so I'm super excited. The Eurotrip will have to wait and I'm looking forward to it down the road, but living in Vancouver will be great for my focus and working on my poker game.

Check out my video on Cardrunners that's coming out tomorrow. It should recap some interesting hands that I played in the main event. I think you guys will like it. Once I get back to Austin, I will try to pump out another full-length video, but once I'm in Vancouver expect a lot more cool and interesting content.

That being said, I don't have a ton of time to write right now, but I'm going to be on the road to Austin for a couple of days and I'll have a lot of time on my hands to roll things around in my head, as I am wont to doing. I've always found driving by myself on long trips to be very cathartic and helps me to focus on my life and put my affairs in perspective, but this time I had an idea that I want to see how will work out. I've been doing video blogs while in Vegas, and although they turned out okay and I think I can communicate well through video, I think the written word is my home and I want to improve my craft as a writer. So I decided to enlist the help of my blog readers to help me come up with my next blog entry while I'm on the road.

What I'm going to do is give out a list here of potential topics for my next blog. I'll probably write it tonight or tomorrow sometime while I'm on my drive from Vegas to Austin. I'm sure my mind will be engrossed in all sorts of things on the way there, but when I stop somewhere with internet I will bring my laptop and bang out my next blog entry. So leave a comment on my blog or on Twitter (@INTERNETPOKERS) and let me know what you want me to write about off of this list of topics. Whichever one gets the most votes by the time I check back, I'll compose a blog post about. I am curious to see what people are interested to read about!

• My thoughts on live poker, regs, and the live poker scene
• On the the difference between poker theory and poker play, and how they relate to study/practice
• Why poker seems to make me sad (an interesting comment on my last blog entry which I thought I might address)
• Interesting stories/people from Vegas
• The desire and aspiration of travel and adventure
• On the poker instructional video industry, landmarks, and how it's changed the game
• How to play king motherfucking queen

Leave a comment and let me know which one you're interested in reading about. I'll check back tomorrow while I'm on the road, roll it around the old noggin for a while, and bang something out on my laptop. And don't forget to check out my video!

Best of lucksacking,

Haseeb

(Obligatory travel song)

Hey guys,

I have returned from my slumber with another video blog for all you guys to ogle my glorious mug. After listening to the copious angry feedback, I have finally figured out that filming my videoblogs next to a tornado was probably not the best idea, so I filmed this blog inside our Aria Sky Suite, where I'm staying with Jungleman. It's a pretty sick place, and you can see the view from out the window if you look really hard and can see around the stunningly beautiful man sitting in that chair over there.

Here you go!




Feel free to leave comments, hatemail, marriage proposals, found wallets, etc. in the comments section!
-Haseeb

Tommy Angelo joins Jared Tendler tonight on the Quad Jacks podcast. This comes at a great time because I'm faced with a coaching situation that's beyond my ability.

Some background: I saw a player post the following in the forums:

"I play cash games and I am - 27BB/100 after 60.000 hands. I study poker hard and I am not drunk when I play. This is the worst rate I have ever met. Probably I have a mental desease that I found out with poker. Any help?"

This inrigued me and I decided to check out his PTR:

http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/6641/ptrnewperson.jpg
(having problems posting it, so just click on link above for now)

I was really curious what it takes to achieve such a winrate and told the player I would check out his hand and offer some advice. I wanted to see if I could help him turn his game around with some coaching.

After checking out his hands, I decided three things:

1. He is playing too loosely.
2. He is not value betting his good hands.
3. He is bluffing too many rivers.

Some of these are techinical issues. To address point #1, I sent him an opening hand chart. Point #2 is much more difficult to address so I decided to wait. For point #4, I specifically told him to just never bluff on the river. Ever. I figured this would be enough to help REDUCE his losses (to think about winning at this point would be too ambitious).

After he played 1,000 hands, I got the following message on Skype:

Student: Sorry for the delay, but it was quite difficult to send you these hands, mainly the ones from Sunday. It was a disaster. On Sunday I lost 6 BI, because of bluffs on the river with air!!! I'm very disapointed. I have to try harder. Iknew that it was wrong, but I was doing it repeatedly....

I was speechless. In my mind, we identified a simple and obvious leak and then he went right back to doing it. Clearly, his issue isn't the techinical side of poker (although he's got major issues with his A-game as well, but that's not what this post is about). Bottom line: We identified a specific leak, I told him what the fix was, and he went right back to it.

I told him to take the day off and if he plays again, stop if he loses two BI's. Once again, I gave very specific instructions: Never bluff river with air.

So this morning, I look at the hands he sent me from yesterday's session:

Hand 1: http://weaktight.com/4427029
Hand 2: http://weaktight.com/4427031

Guess what? Bluffing river with air. I asked him about it:

Pawel: QJ ... you bluffed the river.
Student: the only one!!!
Pawel: doesn't matter
Pawel: why did you do it?
Student: That player was extremely bad. More than me!!!
Student: He fold before at any bet
Student: When I find a very loose and pasive palyer, i become more loose and more agresive, although I know that I have to becoem more tight

I then asked about the A6s hand:

Pawel: I just saw the A6s hand
Pawel: you said you only bluffed river once
Pawel: that's twice
Student: It wasn't totally air... it was nut flush draw. And against that opponent, he had lost many hands with A high

So my question for you guys is ... what's going on here? Is this someone who can become better and what will it take? At this point, I don't feel like I am able to offer him much help.

Hey guys,

It's been a while since I've checked in with my blog. As you can imagine, things have been all over the place with all of the recent events. Well, since driving across the country, meeting up with friends and meeting some poker legends, it's been an interesting couple weeks after arriving in Vegas. I decided instead of writing a traditional blog, I'd try give videoblogging a try since it seems to be all the rage. I apologize for the sound quality in this one; next time, I'll try to record in a place that's a little quieter.

But please let me know what you guys think, and if you think Vlogs are newfangled hogglewash or that ogling my glorious mug makes it too difficult to focus on my words, leave a comment and I'll consider following up subsequent blogs in a different format. Please give feedback!!



And if that embed doesn't work or mysteriously disappears, as seems to happen on these blogs for some reason... here's a direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWpkeqfFRow

Godspeed,
Haseeb