wired story in the world: 2012

I have been playing poker since I was 9 years old, my dad taught me how to play with Monopoly money! It was love at first sight deal and over the last 35 years I have been a poker player at heart. It has been really great to see the game get such a monumental revival over the past 8 years, it is on TV, at the local casino and it seems everyone is doing it! As you can tell by my blog I also have a love of weird news, so why not mix the two together and see what comes out. Here are a couple of my favorite all-time poker stories:

If you follow the poker world closely, you should know that Ted Forrest is known for his outlandish prop bets. Well, on Sunday, Forrest and Matusow entered into a prop bet of their own, and it will be interesting to see whether or not Matusow can win the bet. According to Matusow, it will be a piece of cake and a slam dunk.

Forrest bet Matusow $100,000 that Matusow can not drop enough weight to weigh in at 181 pounds by this time next year. Matusow currently weighs in at 231 pounds. So if Matusow drops 50 pounds over the next year, then he wins the bet and $100,000.

According to Matusow, he has an “amazing” metabolism, and could lose 50 pounds in a month if we wanted to. Matusow claims that he spends “24 hours a day in bed playing online poker” and eats “a whole pizza and two hamburgers per day.” All of this food, and Matusow claims that he has only gained 30 pounds over the last year.

When there is money involved, Matusow goes on to say, I’ll drop the weight with no problem and Forrest will be paying up. If Matusow truly does eat a pizza and two hamburgers per day, then we hope for his sake that he does win this bet, or else he’ll be dropping dead of a heart attack. This is just too funny! Living the good life is not good if you die at 45 of a heart attack!

Second story goes as follows;

Rumors have been swirling over the past few days as to the financial status of online poker guru David Benyamine. Many in the poker community are speculating (though this is purely rumor and shouldn’t be taken as fact at this point) that Benyamine has busted his own bankroll and is currently on the borrow from several players, most notably of which is Patrik Antonius. Some in the poker community are speculating that Benyamine currently owes over a million dollars to various players, with Antonius being owed the biggest chunk of money.

Anyone who has followed the high stakes results on Full Tilt as of yet have seen that Benyamine has not been very successful as of late. I believe that he is down close to 2 and a half million dollars on Fill Tilt in the past month or so. The question is, how big is his bankroll? Can he absorb that type of a drawdown? And according to reports, he dropped a good sum of money in the PLO / No Limit Hold’em mixed game in Vegas over the past week.

Are the reports wrong? Does Benyamine still have a healthy bankroll? Or is he in fact in debt? Is this the reason why he is often times playing short-stacked now in the biggest games on Full Tilt?

Again, just rumors, but the poker world is buzzing about this, if this guy falls I will be in absolute shock. But you know what they say, easy come, easy go!