T (wiccat13)

Professional Poker Player
Born Raised in Mass
Schooled in NJ
Transplanted To Las Vegas
Playing poker since 1993

[Jeff Platt @jeffplatt]

DIM THE LIGHTS

[Steven Touitou @Elienevets]

This tweet is a perfect snapshot of why public poker is dying in Vegas. And it’s worth understanding exactly how we got here because the story is more complicated and more damning than most people want to admit.

Berkey, publicly, on his verified account, essentially advertising that private games are hunting grounds for recreational players. Dressed up as a compliment to Jeremy Dan. A chef’s kiss. What a gem. Come play with us privately.

This is poaching in broad daylight. Not in a back room. On Twitter. And nobody bats an eye because it’s normalized. Because the whole ecosystem has agreed to pretend this is just community enthusiasm and not a player base being systematically drained by the people who are supposed to be its ambassadors.

None of this is new information. The mechanism has been discussed publicly for years. The problem is that the conversation stayed theoretical while the disease kept spreading. What was once a handful of private games running at 50/100 and above, games that existed in a rarified world most players never touched, quietly migrated down the stakes ladder until it consumed everything. Every poker room in Vegas now has multiple private games running inside it. Different groups, different runners, different reserved signs, covering everything from 10/20 to 25/25 to 25/50 to 50/100. Games that used to be public. Games that any skilled player or recreational player with the right bankroll could walk into without asking anyone’s permission, without knowing the right people, without waiting for a text that may never come. That access is gone. And most people who lost it don’t even fully understand what replaced it or who benefits from the replacement.

To understand why the private game system found such fertile ground you have to understand what happened to the public games first. Live poker above 5/10 thrived for years. There were young technically brilliant players in those games but they understood something that got lost along the way. You have to make the experience worth coming back to. You read the room. You give action. You let the wealthy guy feel like a player even when you’re taking his money. The best young pros of that era were technically sharp and socially intelligent and the games were alive because of it.

Then came a new generation from every corner of the world. Solver trained, theoretically elite, sitting down like they were running a process rather than playing a game. They didn’t do anything wrong. They just came to play poker. But the social reality is what it is. The guy who makes these games run is not a poker player. He’s wealthy, successful, socially fluent. He runs companies. He orders bottles. He wants to laugh and feel like a king for a few hours. And when he sits down he finds himself across from someone who hasn’t looked up from the felt in three hours. Not talking. Not tipping. Not contributing a single calorie of energy to the table. Legal. Technically fine. Socially a graveyard. So he stops coming back. And the game gets smaller.

And here is something nobody talks about honestly. Part of how we got here is television and the culture it created around what a poker player is supposed to look like.

It started with cowboys. Cowboy hats, cigarettes, whiskey on the table, guys who played on feel and told stories and made the whole thing feel like theater. Then the poker boom hit and suddenly everyone was on television and someone put on sunglasses at the table and it worked and then everyone had sunglasses. Then came the headphones because someone wanted to block out the world and it became a look. Then scarves. Then hoodies. Then nose straps. Each one started with one person who had a reason for it and became a costume that the next generation copied because they saw it on television and thought that was the uniform.

[Matt Savage @SavagePoker]

The 25th Anniversary @PokerTDA Summit @PokerGO is in the books! Thank You for your support and participation

[David Williams @dwpoker]

💪🏾

[PokerNews @PokerNews]

🍬 | What is @martinkabrhell up to now at the @WSOP?

[PGT @PokerGOTour]

The 24th-PGT qualifying event of the WSOP was the $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Championship, and American Michael Mizrachi topped the 836-entrant field to win $1,350,203 and his ninth WSOP bracelet.

🏆 Mizrachi earned 1,100 PGT points and his fourth cash of the season to move to eighth on the PGT leaderboard with 1,220 PGT points.

🥈 Zurvan Tumboli earned his first-ever PGT cash and sits in 23rd with 900 PGT points.

♠️ Martin Zamani finished fourth and moved to 19th on the PGT leaderboard with 919 PGT points.

🦍 Jesse Lonis finished seventh and sits 39th on the PGT leaderboard with 696 PGT points.

♦️ Kristen Foxen picked up 37 PGT points for her 32nd-place finish and closed the gap on her husband Alex, who sits in fourth on the PGT leaderboard.

♣️ Josh Arieh earned his seventh cash of the season and moved to 33rd on the PGT leaderboard with 786 PGT points.

[Jeff Platt @jeffplatt]

We will make a real effort to improve rail experience next year.

[Poker Org @pokerorg]

Matt Higgins rail yells:

“CAN WE GET MATT’S TABLE OVER HERE?!”

14 left Mystery Millions

[Daniel Negreanu @RealKidPoker]

We're back with a big chip stack for day 2 of the $1500 8 Game event making another deep run.

Day 36 WSOP Vlog drops in 30 minutes...

https://t.co/HOSqztL65o

@GGPoker

[T (wiccat13) @WiCCaT_13]

https://t.co/al8bA0yak4

[Rampage @rampagepoker]

My first final table this summer with this handsome fella :D

[Jess Beck @jessbeckpoker]

I promised @cardplayer619 if his guy won, I'd break out the fisheye.

His fella won.

Congrats Ciro! Mexico's first bracelet winner in Vegas in nearly 20 years 🇲🇽🏆🇲🇽

[Palms Casino Resort @Palms]

Wilton swept BOTH drawings, scoring a new Honda Prelude and $7K+ in Free Play. 😌✨

You could win a Honda Passport next → https://t.co/raUsEHmK0t

#PalmsLV #ThisisThatVegas #ClubSerrano

[Vital Vegas @VitalVegas]

When the center bar at Ellis Island went away, many regulars lamented its loss. They can officially un-cry those tears with the opening of Bar 1968. @elliscasinolv

[PokerStars LIVE @PokerStarsLIVE]

With 1,753 entries the PokerStars Open Malaga Main Event has eclipsed its own record. 📈

The champion will walk away with €258,080, whilst the top 255 finishers will cash for at least €1,700 and everyone who makes Sunday's final table will be guaranteed €31,100.

[PokerStars LATAM @PokerStarsLatam]

El sobrino @DanteMartinelli 🇦🇷 se llevó el protagónico de #ElFreerollazo de junio. 🥇 ¡A disfrutar ese 🎫 de US$109 campeón! 👏

Completaron el podio 👇
🥈 'crloswos' 🇦🇷
🥉 @german73417748 🇦🇷

[phil_hellmuth @phil_hellmuth]

Welcome Ladies!!

I personally welcomed the final table to the @WSOP

10 left in the @WSOP Ladies tourney, a record 1,475 players started! Poker is on the rise!

We are having a Ladies tourney in August: and I am donating $25,000 of my own money to the prize pool

#POSITIVITY

[PokerNews @PokerNews]

Dominated on the FLOP!? @WSOP $1,000 Tag Team! ❌

Is there a way for Team Buchmiller / Rosenblum to SURVIVE!? 👀

[WSOP - World Series of Poker @WSOP]

Can You Believe These Hands?

@GGPoker Ambassador @DenysChufarin was all-in with pocket kings on Day 1 of the Mystery Millions, only to run into the pocket aces of Omri Ben Zaken and the pocket jacks of Jonathan McGowan. Aces are a big favorite, but nothing’s ever guaranteed in poker!

[Vital Vegas @VitalVegas]

Big thanks to @EricRaskin for having us on his Low Rollers podcast to talk about the Caesars/MGM acquisitions, video poker, casino tipping etiquette and more. https://t.co/B7uJ9BVvzM