Is Alan Keating related to Charles Keating the Billionaire Financier?

I assume there's no relationship but maybe the rabid detail-oriented detectives in this thread can do some deep research on the subject.

no, but he is related to Ronan Keating

while you're not wrong about the kindergarten comment, in 2023 if you're a high stakes whale you have no reason to want to play in public games. it ends up being you and 7-8 pros with a 40 person waiting list ready to pick you apart and they're for the most part not enjoyable to be around. When you leave the game breaks. At least in private games you can pick you who you play, have a much more fun atmosphere and have other whales in the game with you.

I highly doubt you’re watching poker streams. You’re just talking about an ideal of what you think a poker stream to be. Watching people play gto is very boring for 95% of the time!

actually i do watch poker streams and yes most players do have a vpip over 50% and are horrible at poker in general. in general. Particularly the players on HCL who seem to take pride in having the highest vpip. As far as GTO being boring. GTO is actually extremely aggro. If you think exciting means bet call poker where players are way to passive than no you want like watching GTO. Also i dont think GTO would make a stream as boring as you think. Sure if its a table full of GTO players lots of hands want even see the flop. If you put 1 GTO player at table full of crappy stream players The crappy players are gonna keep calling like always. They'll just be punished more for it. They'll also face more 3 and 4bets but i doubt they would be detered.

I’ve watched some high roller tournament streams, and not just final tables. They weren’t extremely aggro. Bets are smaller, more checking, less raising of flop/turn bets etc

GTO is so fun guys!!! Its mega aggro! great for TV! see this one clip of that one time one guy did something crazy? whoa!

GTO is aggro but is not reflected by the boring players that try to use it on TV but just end up being mute nits.

Yeah one time it was a mixed strategy of 80 call/20 raise and this guy just raised without even consulting his randomizing watch timer! Whoa!

Seems more like a problem with the players than GTO. Besides a player doesn't have to be some type of GTO god to be decent

Stephen1212 (not sure if I got his name right) is extremely skilled and I don't think he would be boring on Stream at all at least not his poker

What is your point?

Stefan11222*

Amazes me how people are shocked with this. These rich people are clearly wierd from the outset. They are terrible at poker and dont even care about being good. Just throwing money away. They could literally give the money to charity, of course they dont because they love the falsed social that poker brings. If they didnt play poker no one would talk to them

To be fair, in some deepstack games inhabited by bad players, VPIP (which is a preflop measure) is not that important to end results. Post flop play is far more important and meaningful.

That you don't have to a table full of clueless donks to have a good show

Honestly it was great of him to donate a mil in the streamer game. Got at least Botez hooked, who organised games with other streamers. That's very good for the growth of Poker imo

I think a good mix of players is ideal. Clearly some people prefer watching tough players battle and try to play well and some people prefer whales with gambooool. I think a mix is good since too many tough players and it will turn a bit boring but too many whales turn it into televised bingo. The mix of players is also good since the whales can force the pros off of the regular game tree.

I don't think it's a given that tough pros are boring. Doug Polk is one of the biggest advocates for theory based play and I don't think anyone's accusing him of being boring. GMan doesn't play perfect GTO but he plays pretty solid and was one of the most popular players. I personally thought Andy->Gman and Art->Gman battles were the highlight of the show and a lot more fun to watch then Keating flip with MrBeast, but again, it's a personal preference.

If the VPIP is such a concern the ante helps it, maybe even do a 2X BB ante, or other simple tweaks to make it "correct" to give action.

I didn't listen to the twitter space but my read on Keating is that he's more interested in the metagame of poker business than poker itself, which makes sense given that it's generally more lucrative. People are asking, how much is HCL really worth? Well if it was already worth a massive amount of money, clearly they woudn't give out significant equity. The whole point of business investing is to get equity while it's still nominally worth less but there's a lot of upside. He sees a growing brand and wants a piece hoping that there's paths to more revenue than what we currently see.

I think it's good for HCL to reject Keating. They can keep their direction and equity. If he wants to compete, competition breeds innovation. I think there's plenty of new ways to make streamed poker interesting and it's in everyone's best interest if a more legitimate challenger to HCL than LATB's sad shadow emerges.

Yes, but that was Alan's decision to play that way. You can't expect now to get something that already happened if they hadn't agreed before.

I did this, I did that...that ridiculous.

Yea agree, nobody in their right mind would give him equity for blasting of his money if they didn't agree before.


Honestly a pretty good idea, weird that this isn't default for TV poker

Agreed. No one in TV poker seems to understand how to create an action oriented game via blind structure. Look at the upcoming Million Dollar Cash game from Hustler for instance.

They've advertised it as as $500/$1000 with no ante. The game should be $1000/$1000 with a $2000 bb (for an 8 handed game) ante. That's how you facilitate an action oriented game via blind structure.

Edit: Feldman please give me 5% equity for this genius idea

you better give nik airball a large percentage of that since he said something similar on stream this weekend. he suggested to have around of $800 antes instead of straddles.

If Keating creates his own stream, he should put it on Saturday and Sunday when HCL isn't on.

And call it Sunday Punt Day.

Which show would you prefer to watch if they were both on at the same time, Keating's stream or HCL?

Honestly would like a show with actual good players instead of whales gambling. PokerGO million dollar game was nice

Having all good players sort of goes against Hustler's USP and content would become homogenised because that is what most other shows are like. Maybe they could occasionally have a stream where the better HCL players (Mariano, Rampage, Poker Bunny, Torelli, Andy Stacks, Chin) battled each other or better quality opponents from the live scene or the internet.