From stars changes, Fedor Holzs run and William Kassoufs impressive year... What Is the biggest story of 2016?

This sounds like the beginning of an unbearable 8 minute Doug Polk video

I was a very slightly winning player for a brief while this year

50% of players on Twitter accused 50% of other players on Twitter of being ****s and it was proven that they were right 50% of the time, meaning that officially 12.5% of people in poker are ****s.

The possible flawed maths above doesn't matter, as 12.5% is intuitively the right answer anyway.

Yes, something you're not required to watch is "unbearable". gtfo.

As for the topic: Probably DNegs releasing the info to the world that higher rake is good because ??? Nobody ever thought this before but thankfully he shed some light on this previously unknown topic. He should feel ashamed for releasing such precious info to the public. Leave that to the training sites and/or people who care about online poker.

How about the novelist's newly created "Hendon Theorem"

I like that, "The Hendon Theorem". It sounds like something people who back players for live MTTs need to inject or take a shot of before paying a ludicrously high mark up with a total disregard of real probabilities.

Your nickname for me, "The Novelist", I am not so enamoured with. It makes me sound like a very tame and ineffectual superhero.

New Year's Resolution: work on my forum posting game.

PokerNews is probably hiring, Sage.

With that said, Derbyshire's blunder has to be top 10 news of the year. Whether or not you agree with him or not is a totally different story.

I would be fired too after not long, as most of my thoughts, views and theories are not what pro/semi-pro poker players or grinders want to hear, because many of my views are contrarian to the poker community and dig under the surface of some of the BS that exists within the poker community and the poker industry itself.

I did use to be a paid writer for the now defunct The Gutshot Forum where I also won forum poster of the year back to back. Sick(ish) brag. Reverse sick brag is that I have never won a trophy for *playing* poker!

Back on what is really the biggest story of 2016. I would say Will Kassouf.

Something that most people will not know, and those that do will conveniently never mention, is that in Will's earlier days playing live comps in the UK, circa 2010 to 2013, he was widely ridiculed, criticised and moaned about by the big clique of UK pros and UK live MTT regs.

The ridiculing of him and blasting him for how he played and table talked was perpetuated by live tournament bloggers also doing the same.

I commented at the time that all of these people were basically bullying him and that they were totally clueless because it was so, so obvious that he was using an at the table poker persona as part of his strategy, or perhaps even at that time as a coping mechanism that helped him focus or get into the zone.

I hardly play or played Hold'em comps so was only on the table once with him. From memory it was a £400 comp at The Fox club in, Shaftesbury Avenue, London (in London's West End district). It is now a Genting Casino.

Will was at my table giving it all the spiel, and most of players at the table were giving him the eyes of disapproval or muttering under their breath.

There were also players walking around within earshot, who were not even on our table, also talking and complaining about how he played. Plus the live blogger (I think it was from Blonde Poker) was writing all sorts of bad stuff on their forum about what a disgrace it was how he was conducting himself.

I was of totally the opposite view and I actually thought that his table talk was just amusing and a totally acceptable part of the game. This may be because I was/am somewhat of a table talker myself and because my background is mainly in live cash games where you see and experience a much wider range of characters and therefore a wider spectrum of behaviour at the table.

Nonetheless, what this clique of UK players, aided and abetted by live comp bloggers, was doing was pure and unadulterated gang mentality bullying.

Where are these players now. Well many or most have crashed and burned or drifted out of the game, and the remainder have or may have gone on to be successful pro players but have done so with next to zero style, personality or panache.

As much as I admire and respect the incredible achievements in 2016 of Fedor Holz, David Peters and others, for me the biggest story of the year is Will Kassouf. He shook up, what is a rather boring poker world, in his own inimitable way and in doing so taught a lot of people a valuable life lesson, don't bully, gang up on or ridicule someone for being different or an individual.

Was the repeating of paragraphs intentional? If not how ironic that you're in full support of his table talk..
I love a bit of chat but his is pretty much the nut low. Just the same 2 or 3 lines on loop over and over, mostly to himself also as no one contributes at all except for the occasional stfu. It's not clever.
And I don't believe it's an act either. His post tournament interviews and stuff show the same annoying, quite socially enept chatter.


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Yes sorry, I did double post a few paragraphs but have now corrected that.

I know that Will's version of table talk is an extreme version which is why many players find it difficult to cope with, but in all honesty this is a weak area of their game that they need to work on, a) because it can cause them to make bad decisions, b) because they should really be treating it as a technical challenge to decipher his speech play into him giving off a tell and c) because some degree (yes a grey area at WSOP) of speech play will always be permitted, so *is* a legitimate part of live poker.

Yes I am in the minority given my background that about 1/3rd of my game is purely about picking up live tells, timing, body language, speech play and some more subtle ones, and trying to give off reverse tells myself.

So when I am in a live game, profiling everything about my opponents is something I look at straight away and throughout. I have actually, based only on WSOP TV coverage, got some tells on Will which I am pretty certain of.

I won't be playing him in a NLHE comp but it is possible I may do in PLO cash games in London at some point so will be testing their efficacy.

The other thing is this. If you can't get tells from his speech play then you should be looking to do something else to neutralise his speech play.

Not quite saying "lah, lah, lah, lah, I can't hear you" while sticking your fingers in your ears, but a more carefully crafted version of this. Or maybe just simply talk over him at 50% higher in volume as his voice.

If players sat down and discussed things to counter his speech play, either by embracing it and analysing it for tells, or by taking the destructive line of neutralising it then I am sure they would come up with multiple effective ways of achieving both methods.

Instead they just complain, with an air of condescending superiority about what he is doing being wrong.

And not even a ****in hint of a thank you marke.

Wow you are being very over sensitive. I said sorry which is way more polite than most on the forum. Also I knew I had double posted before I saw your post, so you are not as big a hero as you may think.

Don't be fooled. I'm a massive hero.
And 'twas just a joke my dear boy

Kassouf as #1 story of the year is ridiculous. I don't even think I have to write any type of argument to make that any more clear than it already is.

Stars / Amaya continuing down the path of no return making more unthinkable changes

The online poker situation In Lithuania has really kept us Californians on the edge of our seats

For the 17th year in a row it looks like Rounders 2 is going to be made.

...Entrepreneur life.

The complete demise of Pokerstars in every facet of company except advertising. Software, customer support, promotions, security? Casjout times, public relations, transparency, honesty all off a cliff and 100% effort in to getting pedro and his 7 brothers and blind grandmother to deposit and play spin and goes. Ffs get rid of those pathetic daily 500$ givenothingaways. The goal is to
Gove away meaningless prizes so nothing is
Cashed out. Disingenious and sadly, standard. How can it get worse? Please dont take away the 2$ giveaways

Lederer and Ferguson return to the WSOP. One apologizes, one doesn't.

Obama throws us a bone on the way out of office and signs bill to legalize online poker (hasn't happened yet but maybe it could?)

Just don't. As much as you enjoy hearing yourself, think twice and just don't post.

Nolan Dalla allegedly drunkenly feeling up Jaclynn Moskow http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...erica-1591640/

Also the rise of twitch poker.

The rise in the number of people making podcasts and twitch streams. The decline in the numbers of people playing poker.