Who would you like to see in HCL Million Dollar Cash Game

Dwan played poorly in several spots. His river calls against players who are not balanced were strange.
Maybe he is used to playing against players who bluff way too much in these spots.
His QQ fold against Steve was about his only decent fold over 4 days.

D.

The game has the same level of appeal as the high stakes thread. When I click it I feel like "time to look at some numbers". "Oooh that's a big number". "Ooooh look at that number". Yeah they're playing high stakes, but they weren't play particularly well, and they barely talked to each other at the table. The guy Brandon seems a bit unpleasant, like he expects people to jump through hoops in order for them to deserve to win his money. Stanley is a nit and mostly just matches numbers and letters when he's not bored. Keating is chill but he's getting less interesting every time he plays. What people said about having no interesting pros in the game is true. It was played at a very low level and Santosh is legit the best player at the table. Peter is a nit wearing a gambler's windbreaker. Rich whale is a nice sale but he basically played off a beginner's preflop chart the entire night. I would give the best player award to Thomas but covering yourself from head to toe and barely talking audibly is not really compelling tv; neither is shortstacking a game when you're supposed to be a pro. I was really bored last night and kept circling back, but it only took a few hands each time to make me go look for something else to do. Did Dwan get in the game later? That would have given it a small boost but watching Dwan occasionally try to piece up some amateurs is not really good tv.

I get the impression Dwan has played against a lot of Asian aggrofish and assumed he'd ran into another Wesley with Peter. It took him far too long to figure out he's a nut peddler though I agree.

He tried to angle Keating on the river, eventually flicked in the call, was super pissed he got rivered then IMMEDIATELY called it quits. Did he play a long session that day? Yes he did. But it’s also true that he was agro about that one hand, quit early the other day and quit on Friday after losing one hand. But it’s Feldman’s fault for begging him to play when he knew he could only play 3 hours the other day.

Did Stanley really hand Thomas over a small stack of 5 dollar chips after he went broke? why?

Wesley probably still picks up quarters off the ground

they were his and in the way. I dont think it was a needle the guy left money behind

Will be having Keating on my YT channel tonight (8pst) to discuss the game and what went down during the days he played

How rich is Alan Keating?

I'm almost entirely convinced that Keating held like 10% of all dogecoin in supply and sold it at the top. It fits his slightly goofy persona and how he almost acts as if he doesn't deserve to have the wealth that he does lol. Also fits how a broke poker player suddenly is infinitely rich. Few things that can explain it, but dogecoin can

How many of us did at one point think "I should just ape into dogecoin for the lulz, it's a solid meme and maybe it'll blow up one day". Well, I believe that Alan actually did it.

Very rich!

I think he’s just a trust fund kid.

Keating is known to be from the Ann Arbor, MI area (not Detroit) and has made a very good chunk of money 'moving paper' around .. ala Bill Perkins. Does he have 'family' behind him .. ala Lynne .. that enabled him to leverage his deals? Maybe? There's money everywhere in the world, but Ann Arbor is not known for the uber rich IMO. There's an abundance of automotive related wealth in SW Michigan, but for someone to accumulate the type of wealth we think he has would not have received it 'mainly' from manufacturing means .. IMO.

Speaking of someone who does make money from companies .. I'd love to see Jake Daniels show up on a stream. He was really into 'live' cash poker via some of the PokerGo stuff coming out of CV19 and was good all around for the show. I know he purchased a Michigan company and was going to blend it into his Texas operations over a period of time. Speculating a fallout with PokerGo and/or just his own mindset has led his public results being mainly at the Wynn, the WPT and in TX.

It would be interesting to see the total chips moved by either all-ins and/or 'polar' River bets over the 4 days. As Tom has said publicly more than once, he has more 1000bb deep poker hours played than most Players in the world (his opinion). Is he really experiencing enough polar bluffs at that stack depth to allow himself .. or really any of the Players .. to feel the need to constantly call down in those spots? Obv we wouldn't know, but is it really that much different? They just have to have it .. right? it's OK to make folds BEFORE you're stuck a truck.

The Keating hand .. he pushed 9Ts to the side almost immediately .. never mentioned 56 .. said 44 multiple times and then called off a ton needing to be right 33% of the time. Never really mentioning hands he could beat but called it off.

Stanley has come a very long way from his stream debut playing 2/5 I think (certainly no higher than 5/10). I think the money does still matter to him, so there is a conflict between making the poker move v the financially sound move. If I remember correctly he did crack a joke about being rich on HSP this past season. I think he is more apt to let the other larger personalities talk away unless he's invited into the conversation. He also has a very public company and probably doesn't want to offend the masses somehow with some locker room talk.

I agree there was an immediate change in table dynamic when Tom was let into the game on the 4th day. Knowing he was weeklong stuck and with all the SM stuff out there I just don't think anyone was willing to pay him off that late in the session playing short.

Peter's 3x HNR wasn't the best for the stream, but he may not care about being invited back. You have to wonder if he gets away with this in his normal games .. there has to be a huge tilt button with him, eh? You just need to get him stuck .. ala the character in Molly's Game! GL

Ah yea, that was option 2 for how a broke poker player suddenly is infinitely rich I guess, inheritance. Would've preferred it had been doge though.

Could be both, who knows? I heard he is or was a game runner and was close to Bilzerian so there’s another source of wealth. He was probably already successful, well off or well connected to be running massive games with Bilzerian

The picture I've seen painted is he was an online / live pro way back in the day playing 5/10 and 10/20. At some point he got an in with Dan Bilzerian that may or may not have lead to him getting into or running juicy games. This may have opened the door for angel investing as well. Hes slowly distanced himself away from Bilzerian and pushed the angel investor narrative in the recent years.

Nothing is concrete in the public though I'm sure plenty of people know his real story.

What about the unavoidable fact that he isn't good at poker though?
(Sure there's a slim chance he monkeys it up on stream to "Get invites", but that seems like a stretch at this point)

Zero chance he was ever a pro, 100% chance his $ came from somewhere else. Trust fund kid with too much $ to care about these stakes, or finance bro who got given a cushy job and made a lot off of bonuses. Maybe both. If he had done anything notable, it would be front and center in the comments about him.

fwiw he is on one episode of WSOP main event coverage from around 2007-2010*, I thought it was interesting to see he'd been in poker for that long, because like most people I wasn't aware of him until the last couple of years on these streams. Just one hand on an outer table he gets shown I think but definitely him.

* sorry can't be more precise, I watched through a few of these since pokergo reuploaded them on youtube, but it was in that range.

Found this on google

I don't have PG so can't check, but it is him and Yang won in 2007

It’s very possible he didnt have access to his trust fund until a certain age (maybe 30?) He’s 36 right now so it would make sense.

You could have trained a cantaloupe to beat the games in 2006

I'm sure I recall Matt Berkey saying he was a live pro playing the same games as him 15 years or so ago.

I thought the consensus was that he'd made his money through hosting private games, similar to JRB and Hanks.

JRB can't afford to play unless someone backs him. Keating can afford to play poorly to entertain people watching streams. I have zero info about the guy other than seeing his behavior on stream, but there are a lot of pros who are not making any money, but who call themselves pros. If he is a consistent donator in games, is Berkey going to say that in an interview?

Nobody skyrockets through the private game/poker world stratosphere without coming up on the radar. I would say that Keating could easily afford a 5 million dollar downswing, and that implies $ that just can't be quietly won in poker. Somebody can find the real answer.

hes pretty much confirmed trust fund but the other things are also true. he was probably a smaller winning game runner who came into even more money and that would explain his new found insanity. He can both be trust fund and made lots of money. both things can be true