Who is the King of the Ultra High Stakes Underground Poker Games with a strict 'no pro' policy?
Tobey Maguire Nit + psychological warfare $30-40 Millions in 3 years Buy-in of up to $100,000 "approaches the elite level of the players who win bracelets at the World Series." 2007 World Series of Poker Main Event (292nd place, won$39,445)
VS.
Dan Bilzerian LAG + adrenaline seaker $50 Million in 2014 Buy-ins $1 Millions, as high as $5 Millions. As big as $5,000/$10,000 No Limit. The biggest was $10,000/$25,000 No Limit "I am not nearly as good as all these online guys. I am not even close to one of the best players... But it’s like a minor league baseball player going against a bunch of high school guys." 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event (180th place, won $36,626)
Now let's compare our two High-Stakes Underground Poker contenders for the crown of the King of the Ultra High Stakes Underground Poker Games.
TOBEY MAGUIRE
“Tobey Maguire was the worst tipper, the best player, and the absolute worst loser.” - Molly Bloom
Born June 27, 1975 in Santa Monica, California.
Occupation: Hollywood A-List actor
Net worth: $40-50 Million
Famous for: Spiderman
Started tournament poker in 2004.
Been tutored by one of the best poker pros in the world Daniel Negreanu.
Finished in the money in several events.
Can be seen on ESPN's coverage of the 2005, 2006, and 2007 World Series of Poker Main Event Championship.
Played in the 2007 World Series of Poker Main Event. He survived days 1a, 2a, and 3 but was eliminated in 292nd place on the fourth day, taking $39,445 in prize money.
During a 2007 episode of Poker After Dark, Phil Hellmuth said Tobey has made millions of dollars by playing poker in Hollywood poker games, with some estimates as high as $10 million
'I used to call Tobey "Hannibal Lecter" because he could just talk someone off of a good hand,' MollyBloom told 20/20.
The poker playing of A-Lister actor Tobey Maguire (Spiderman) has been described as:
RadarOnline.com reported that Maguire had been winning around $1 million every month for three years in these games. They then estimated that Maguire may have won anywhere from $30 to $40 million playing high stakes poker. And while this number is completely unverifiable, assuming it was accurate, the Spiderman actor could possibly be the biggest poker winner of all-time!
Molly Bloom who organized high stakes underground poker games for the rich and famous described Tobey Maguire as the best player, a sore loser and the worse tipper. There is nothing worse than a good loser! A good loser is usually just a loser. Winning is everything. Particularly in Poker.
Molly Bloom also used to call him "Hannibal Lecter" because he could just talk someone off of a good hand.
His contender, the outspoken Dan Bilzerian called him a "nit", a "jerk-off", and "cheap". He ousted Tobey Maguire for slow play, claiming “he was taking forever in a real big game, he took 15 minutes to chop a little pot”. His bold remarks about the former Superman star continued, “The guy is supposed to be worth $40 or $50 million and he’s quivering over $4,000. It was annoying, he was cheap”. “He’s cheap as fuck and plays like a cheap bitch – a guy who’s worth all that money playing as if he’s broke. Come on, dude." I personally admireMaguire's obvious and lucrative nittiness. No matter the size of the pot, just like Maguire did, you should always play to win. And that's the only thing you should be thinking about: WINNING! Tobey Maguire is known to frequently leaves a game after winning an enormous pot which is a breach of poker etiquette. But who give a fuck about poker etiquette. Poker is all about WINNING the most MONEY you can.
Occupation: Trust fund baby, semi-professional poker player, internet celebrity.
Net worth: $100 Million
Famous for: Millionaire Playboy lifestyle
Goes broke in college playing online poker.
Once turned $750 into $10,000 in one event, as he claimed.
Playing for a living since 2007
Played in the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event. For which he appeared of six episodes of televised show. He finished in 180th place and won $36,626.
By September 2014, he claimed that he earned $50 Million in the last 12 to 14 months playing in High Stakes Private Poker Games.
Claimed that he once lost a coin-flip for about $2,3 million pile of chips.
Said he won $10.8 Million playing cards one night at $5,000-$10,000 no-limit
The poker skills of Dan Bilzerian has been self-described by Dan Bilzerian himself as: “The best way to describe my poker skills is that I’m not the best poker player in the world. But it’s like a minor league baseball player going against a bunch of high school guys.”
I mean; I am alright. I am not nearly as good as all these online guys. I play in private games with business guys and celebrities. They are playing for fun. I don’t play with pros. I am not even close to one of the best players.
He’s one of the biggest cash game players in the world. His games are so big that Bilzerian avoids tournaments all together. “I’ve been playing such high stakes lately that a lot of times the first-place prize is less than what these guys are buying in for at the cash games,” Bilzerian said. “It’s hard to take it seriously.
Plays in games with buy-ins as high as $5 Millions.
“It gets as big as $5,000/$10,000 No Limit. The biggest game I ever played in was $10,000/$25,000 No Limit,” Bilzerian added. “The thing about the game is now the games are playing so big that there’s not as many people that can play that big."
"Tons of celebrities, athletes, etcetera, play poker. It has blown up. They just play private games though, and they don’t go into casinos. It is a very small group of these people who play the stakes that I like to play, though. It’s rare and there aren’t many celebrities who are willing to put $1 million down at a table and shoot it off. I think I know everyone who plays those stakes." All the above statements are just his own claims.
The Verdict: Tobey Maguire poker skills seems to be superior to those of Dan Bilzerian. At least we know from sure source (Molly Bloom) that Maguire is the absolute best player in Hollywood High Stakes Poker Games. Is Tobey Maguire's better than other very good poker playing actors (Ben Affleck, Jennifer Tilly). Yeah! But is Tobey Maguire's as good as 13 WSOP bracelets winner Phil Hellmuth. Not so sure! Meanwhile the only person who talk about Dan Bilzerian poker greatness is Dan Bilzerian himself!?! However Dan Bilzerian seems to be honest about his poker skills by saying that he can outplay non-pro poker whales but he just avoid playing against the pros because he is not at their level. Why risking your money facing the best while you can squeeze money out of the rest. In Poker you have to be selective if you wanna be lucrative.
Tobey Maguire playing antics and bad attitude at the poker tables are all described in this book.
As I always say "Un chirurgien doit se pratiquer sur des cadavres avant d'opérer des vivants." Which could be translated as "A surgeon must practice on corpses before operate on living people."
This is entirely true and that describe my view on Poker playing. If you needs several hours, months, and years of formation to be able to exercises a craft or a profession. Why it should be otherwise for Online Poker? Poker playing is all about the Money! The level of knowledge of the average poker player is higher than ever. Regular online poker players certainly have hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of play as experience. How can you survive if you jump head first into the shark infested sea of online poker? How can you succeed without losing your shirt? Since the level of Poker playing is so high right now. I feel that I need to practice, study, and specialize to be any good and profitable at Poker. My game of choice, as you may know reading this blog, is Heads-Up Fixed Limit Texas Hold' Em Poker. Right now I'm playing (practicing) at Pokerstars (the best place ever to play any kind of poker). I climb the level How can you expect to be lucrative at the lowest money tables if you can't rules the fake money tables? I'm currently on a 1,000,000 Play Money Challenge. I started with the usual 1000 chips given by PokerStars and I will climb my way step by step to the top.
Only playing Heads-Up Limit Hold' Em on Pokerstars.
Starting from the buttom of the ladder at 10/20.
Playing each game with 20 Big Blinds to the finish.
Taking a break after losing a game/stack.
Needing 400 Big Blinds to play at a level.
Return to the preceding level when I'm not satisfied of my playing.
Writing everything on paper (stack, number of hours and hands played, level, comments & impressions of the days) after each day. With weekly, monthly, and yearly total.
Discipline, strict money/bankroll management and a lot of hours of practice and hands played.
Here is the required chip bankroll needed to play at each level.
Just like any other thing, Poker has evolved. Just look at the following citation to give you an idea of the situation. "Back in the day when we wrote Rounders, if you'd read Super System you had an edge over 80% of the players in card rooms and 99% in home games. Now that book and books like it are the basic education that every player has, along with their PhD in math or game theory and a few million hands under their belts." -- Screenwriters of Rounders, David Levien and Brian Koppelman
Transition from No-Limit to Fixed-Limit Adapting the Nash Equilibrium for Heads-Up LIMIT Hold' Em
Since our concern here isn't Heads-Up No-Limit Texas Hold' Em but Heads-Up Fixed Limit Hold' Em the number of effective BB (Big Blinds) will be different.
On PokerStar the minimum required stack to play
HU NL HE 40 BB
HU FL HE 5 BB
According to this, we need 8 TIMES less money to play Limit Holdem than we need to play No Limit.
So the 20+ BB mentioned above would be reduced to 2.5 + BB in a Fixed Limit game. Well... ???? I'm not so sure about the correlation between the two. A more realistic and representative stack is 100 BB in no limit vs. 20 BB in fixed limit as suggested on Pokerstars. With that being said: HU NL HE 20 BB = HU FL HE 4 BB I have to admit that I feel pretty naked at 4-5 BB.
The following is copy-and-paste general information about the HeadsUp Push/Fold charts and their usage for Heads-Up No-Limit Hold' Em. For the original source, I encourage you to click the links of the source at the end of the explanations. Keep in mind that the explanations below were deviced for HU NL HE. So divide the numbers by 5 to give you an idea of what it could be in Heads-Up LIMIT Hold' Em.
General Information
The charts show the Nash Equilibrium solution of the heads-up push-or-fold game. This is a simplified game where the SB is only allowed to go all-in or fold, and the BB can either call or fold when facing a shove. It is important to keep in mind that this is not the solution for the full game where limps and smaller raises are also available. The push-or-fold solution is generally assumed to be very close to the solution of the full game up to around 8bb. In practice the strategy can likely be used at least until 10bb without being too exploitable.
Usage
The tables show the highest effective stack size in big blinds where a hand can be pushed or called. Values bigger than 20 are only displayed as 20+, which means the hand can be played for any stack size of 20bb or less. (Playing push-or-fold is typically only recommended up to around 10bb, depending on the situation. Using push-or-fold for >20bb is almost certainly a bad idea.) Some hands have gaps in their pushing strategies, they are marked with * and the details are displayed below the charts. For example 63s is included in the pushing strategy for stack sizes between 7.1 and 5.1bb, and stacks below 2.3bb.
Example
SB (9.0bb): T3s BB (6.0bb): Q2o The effective stack size is the smaller of the two, before posting any blinds. So the relevant stack size for both players in this hand is 6.0 big blinds. To find the strategy for SBs T3s, check the green area (suited hands) of the "Pusher" chart. The value for T3s is 7.7bb, and since that is larger than the current effective stacks the hand is a push in the Nash Equilibrium strategy. To determine if the BB should call with his Q2o, check the orange area (offsuit hands) of the "Caller" chart and locate Q2o. The value there is 5.6bb. The effective stacks in the current hand are larger than the value for Q2o, so this hand is a fold in the Nash Equilibrium strategy.
You see, when you have a big chip lead in heads-up action, the first secret
is YOU MUST ATTACK. To get a perspective on this, think about how you play when you're the SHORT
STACK... You're prepared to go all-in as soon as possible,
right? Well, you must use this to your ADVANTAGE when you're the
big stack, and PUT YOUR OPPONENT ALL-IN right away... rather than the other
way around. When you have a big chip lead, YOU must be the one to
create "coin-toss" situations... and fast. A coin-toss situation is when
both players have virtually equal odds... and the winning hand is
determined by whatever the flop, turn, and river cards are. In
heads-up poker, any starting hand with a FACE CARD is playable. Or any
pocket pair. It's that simple. If you've got a big chip lead on your
opponent and he CHECKS or LIMPS-IN (calls the blinds), then you should
IMMEDIATELY put him all-in. He wouldn't be checking or limping-in if he
had ANYTHING DECENT at all... If he folds, you've stolen the blinds
from him, which is crucial. If he calls, you've created a "coin-toss"
situation. Odds are you'll win at least one out of every two coin
toss situations. Or at the very least, you'll win one out of three.
Push or Fold: Ax Kx Qx Jx T8 T7s 98s 22+ (103/169 = 60.95%) Here's a basic summary of the "rules" you should follow when playing
heads-up poker with a huge chip lead. When I say "huge", I'm talking about
10 to 1 or more... And that's the exact moment when you MUST PULL THE TRIGGER AND WIN THE GAME. If you don't, the chip stacks can quickly even out again and you may lose
your chance forever. Anyway... here are the RULES you should follow with a huge chip lead (10 to 1 or more): 1. Any starting hand with
a face card or any pocket pair is good. 2. You should either FOLD or
go ALL-IN every time. Nothing else. 3. Force COIN-TOSS situations...
In other words, leverage the 50/50 ODDS as much as possible. Do this two
or three times and you will almost always win the match. 4. If you're
playing against a tight player, it will be even easier. Keep going all-in on
just about every hand and let the blinds eat him to death. Read
and re-read those four principles and you'll be prepared the next time you
make it to a heads-up match. Push or Fold: Ax Kx Qx Jx T8 T7s 98s 22+ (103/169 = 60.95%) 50/50 ODDS means: Ax Kx Q5 Qxs J7 J5s T8 T7s 98s 22+ (91/169 = 53.85%)
The three cornerstones that must be part of your game. You must play: Loose – Always pre-flop and usually post-flop against the majority of opponents. Aggressively – You need to play with frequent (but not mindless) aggression. Unpredictably – Against all but the very worst opponents.
Get these three things right and you have the core of a good heads-up game.
Because this essay is so long, you may not want to reprint all of it. We believe that a good summary is simply a list of the headings. Please feel free to reprint as much or as little as you wish.
Poker Is A Great Teacher.
Poker Improves Your Study Habits.
Poker Develops Your Math Skills.
Poker Develops Your Logical Thinking.
Poker Develops Your Concentration.
Poker Develops Your Patience.
Poker Develops Your Discipline.
Poker Teaches You To Focus On The Long Term.
Poker Teaches You That Forgoing A Profit Equals Taking A Loss (And Vice Versa).
Poker Develops Your Realism.
Poker Teaches You To Adjust To Changing Situations.
Poker Teaches You To Adjust To Diverse People.
Poker Teaches You To Avoid Racial, Sexual And Other Prejudices.
Poker Teaches You How To Handle Losses.
Poker Teaches You To Depersonalize Conflict.
Poker Teaches You How To Plan.
Poker Teaches You How To Handle Deceptive People.
Poker Teaches You How To Choose The Best "Game."
Poker Teaches You The Benefits Of Acting Last.
Poker Teaches You To Focus On The Important Subjects.
Poker Teaches You How To Apply Probability Theory.
Poker Teaches You How To Conduct Risk-Reward Analyses.
Poker Teaches You To Put Things In Context And Evaluate All Variables.
Poker Teaches You How To "Get Into People's Heads."
Known as "The Magician" (largely because he once was a professional magician), Antonio Esfandiari has won two World Poker Tour titles and three World Series of Poker Bracelets. His most notable success was winning the 2012 "Big One for One Drop," the $1 million buy-in tournament that earned him $18.3 million – the largest prize in tournament poker history.
Widely regarded as the world's best poker player, Phil Ivey has won nine World Series of Poker bracelets and finished in the top ten of the WSOP Main Event twice. He has also made nine World Poker Tour final tables, including one win in 2008. He is also known for his cash game prowess, including a famous $16 million win over billionaire Andy Beal in heads-up limit hold'em.
One of the most popular and successful poker players in the world, Daniel "Kid Poker" Negreanu has six World Series of Poker bracelets and two World Poker Tour championships to his name. The Canadian has also twice won the WSOP Player of the Year award (2004, 2013).
Erik Seidel is a member of the Poker Hall of Fame, with good reason. He's won eight World Series of Poker bracelets, and also finished second in the 1988 Main Event. He has been particularly successful in high roller tournaments in recent years, having won or placed highly in many events with buy-ins of $100,000 or more. He also won the 2011 National Heads-Up Poker Championship, defeating Chris Moneymaker in the final.
While Trickett may not be as well-known as many players on this list, he scored one of the biggest prizes of all time when he finished second to Esfandiari at the 2012 Big One for One Drop, winning over $10.1 million as a result. That was enough to make him the UK's all-time leader in live tournament earnings. Some of his other big wins include the $250,000 Challenge at the 2013 Aussie Millions and the 2011 Partouche Poker Tour Main Event.
Known for his occasional outbursts that have made him a must watch in any televised poker event, Phil Hellmuth is known as "The Poker Brat." But he's also an incredibly skilled player, having won a record 13 World Series of Poker bracelets and the 1989 WSOP Main Event. These achievements – among others – have earned him a spot in the Poker Hall of Fame.
The winner of five World Series of Poker bracelets, including the 2008 WSOP Europe Main Event, John Juanda has long been one of the most highly-respected players in the world of tournament poker. He won CardPlayer Magazine's Player of the Year award in both 2001 and 2002, and has made an incredible 30 WSOP final tables, along with six more on the World Poker Tour.
Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi has been a constant force on the tournament circuit over the past decade, and has proven time and again that he has the skills to compete with the world's best in any game. He proved this most dramatically by winning the $50,000 buy-in WSOP Players Championship twice (2010, 2012), the only player to accomplish that feat. In total, he has won three WSOP bracelets and two World Poker Tour titles.
Jamie Gold doesn't have many victories on his poker resume, but the one notable one was enough to earn him a place on this list. Gold was the winner of the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event, taking home a prize of $12 million – at that time, the largest prize ever awarded in tournament poker. While he has not had any major victories since then, that one win ensured his name will always be remembered by poker fans.
Like Gold, Jonathan Duhamel is mostly on this list on the strength of a World Series of Poker Main Event title. Duhamel won the tournament in 2010, winning over $8.9 million and becoming the first Canadian to capture the title. However, Duhamel has a handful of other major cashes to his credit, including a win at a European Poker Tour high roller tournament.
