Ya I was in the same boat reading and listening to those stories. It's funny looking back at how much of that "pro" thing was just an illusion.

sadly true for all but a few

I actually tried to go pro back in 1998 before the boom. I got obsessed with poker (at the time, all they offered was limit) so I bought a van and traveled across the country fishing, camping and playing poker wherever I could find a game. I won everywhere until I got to Vegas and after about 5 weeks of living like a vampire (going to bed at 5-6 am & waking up at 3 pm) and getting a bad hacking cough from all the smoke and also losing at the table, I threw in the towel, tucked my tail and left.

It was fun as a hobby but as a job, it was miserable (for me).

Funny thing is Negreanu, Karina Jett, et al, were in all the games I was playing which were at the Mirage since it was the epicenter of poker at the time.

I'll never forget playing in some miserable limit game at Sams Town trying to chase a bad beat jackpot that was up to $55,000+. It was all old farts and me (around 30 at the time). The game was playing tight as hell, pots were small and it was boring until some dude comes waltzing in loudly talking on his cell phone. IIRC, it looked something like this:



He sits down at my table right in front of me and proceeds to raise every pot and dominate the table all while obnoxiously talking on his cell phone. He ran over the table and won like $400 in no time at all (which may not sound like much but the game was 1/2 or 2/4 and there was little to no action prior to his arrival). I was completely confused & bewildered yet in awe of how he seemed to be printing money with no effort at all. And then he suddenly packed up and left after what seemed like only an hour.

I left shortly thereafter thinking WTF just happened and how the hell can I learn to play like that?

A few years later, the poker boom had started and I'm watching TV and lo and behold, there's that guy with the cell phone on TV talking just as loud & obnoxiously as I remembered him from the game at Sams town.

Turned out to be Mike Matusow

great story

It's almost as if Brad Booth was in different financial situations at different times. Kind of like, he was living a highroller lifestyle with pelnty of swings.

Totally weird.

many people back then in poker who made a lot of money quick were complete idiots with the money. booth was no exception. he thought nothing of blowing 25k a month to stay at the bellagio bc he was playing high stakes games and had full tilt money coming in. so many people from back then who blew tons of money are dead broke and in debt now.

i've played with booth probably 15-20 times and he was always very nice at the table. i believe the posters story about booth lending him his mercedes. i think it's perfectly reasonable for people to mention booth being nice to them, just as it is reasonable for people to mention booth owes a lot of money.

hopefully he is ok/safe and just wanted to get away and be left alone, but it doesn't look good.

Much like many young athletes, many young poker players went from having nothing to making hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars during the boom, but they spent money like it was going to continue forever, but eventually they stop making that money, but continue to live like they are and then **** hits the fan and they are in a bad financial situation.

This was a fun listen but also kind of sad to hear and mourn not only the loss of poker at its hay-day but also Gavin Smith. It trips me out to hear his voice like he's still with us and its also kind of eerie to hear Gavin close out the show talking about going to a memorial service for a friend he lost too early knowing we'd be saying the same thing about him years later.

I think my memory was off, Brad talks about playing poker across the Canadian Yukon and mentioned playing in a shack with a hole in the roof where he would have to clear the snow off the roof when it fell on the poker table but I didn't hear him talking about living in isolation for an extended period of time which was my recollection.

I'll listen to the other two as well and perhaps I'll get lucky, either way, it should be fun, thanks again for posting

These are great but its so tilting to hear Greg Raymer in an ad spot for the Poker Players Alliance talking about having 1 million members and working to make online poker legal, yet here we are some 13+ years later and its still illegal in most states.

I don't play any more but it infuriates me that our damn gov helped kill the game in the US when they shouldn't have the ability (IMO) to stop this industry in the first place

for those who don't understand how soft poker was back then joe sebok was a poker pro lmao

We could do a poker version of the your mama's so fat jokes

Poker was so soft, I won a $13K main event package on Bodog in a tournament where 1st place was winner take all but I finished second

I’m a friend of Brad’s in the Reno area. Texted w him day b4 he went missing... this is what I heard from another friend of Brad’s who is a Reno poker player:

His case has been moved to the homicide division in Reno PD and Chad Crow is the point man. Any info please contact detective Crow...

Our friend spoke at length with the Reno PD today and they have found NOTHING to indicate Brads not alive. They have taken an interest in his case and thats why it was turned over to Homicide. So they can get more aggressive in finding Brad.

He has a meeting with the lead detective coming up to see what else he can find and said he will keep me posted...

This is very bad news. I do not believe that they would assign the case to homicide without a reason. Otherwise its just a missing persons report. I would imagine they have found his truck with blood in it or some signs of trouble and now they are waiting to see who comes forward with information that only the criminals will have.

hopefully the police arent lying to us but I doubt it. Homicide sounds serious

Why do you call it "garbage" to talk about his debts?

The topic seems rather relevant to a "news, views, & gossip" thread about him being missing.

Possibly even more relevant than him loaning someone his Mercedes for a few days several years ago.

The thing here is, this isn't really a gossip piece. We like to pretend that poker celebrities are some external part of the community, but they're just like us. You can go sit down with Negreanu or Haxton or Joe Ingram or Booth, and they'll chat with you and you come to see they're just normal people, with big gambool in their hearts. So the reason people are looking to avoid speculation in these posts is because honestly, the post is more geared towards working to find the person. The poker community is wide-reaching and has great resources within it, and Booth is a part of that community the same as anyone frequenting this site.

For this case to be investigated as a homicide there must be some sort of evidence pointing in that direction. A body or a preponderance of blood being the most likely. Some sort of evidence of foul play, witness testimony, or a confession. At least that's my understanding of how homicide investigations work. Missing persons don't get investigated as homicide unless there's evidence of such.

Hopefully police find Brad alive if possible or catch his killer if he was killed.

I don't think they said it was being investigated as a homicide, rather the homicide divison is investigating. Homicide detectives don't necessarily work exclusively on homicides and will sometimes be called upon to investigate suicides, missing persons, and other kinds of cases.

Poker players are gamblers and when they stop making money it's primarily due to a prolonged period of losing. Is there one famous pro that doesn't have a "when I was broke" story?

There might be those who lose money outside of poker/gambling - poor business decisions etc. - this is what happens to athletes.

Very few have the discipline to play within their bankroll, move down when they have to, avoid the pit or sportsbetting during a downswing, take a break etc. These guys end up repeatedly broke and some ruin their lives completely.

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This goes without saying, but once again really hope Brad is found safe and healthy.

Don’t mean to add to the derail but there is 100% a lot of “famous pros” who likely are very financially responsible.

People just assume they aren’t based on random speculation or gloss over them and point to their peers who wen’t broke.

I’m not really sure where people get this idea that everyone who gambles professionally is a degenerate either.

OK everyone has their bad moments/mistakes. Brad or otherwise.

Being assigned to a homicide detective just means they are giving the case to one of their best detectives and allowing more resources to be used in figuring out what happened to him, not necessarily that they have evidence of a homicide.

Why do this for brad tho? There’s lots of missing people reports filed, what makes brad special? Also, why would a murder cop stop what he’s doing and start looking for a missing person? Doesn’t make sense to me

People get murdered over relatively small amounts of money, somewhat regularly. Perhaps the police think that's a distinct possibility here.

THanks. I really enjoy stories like this. Do you still play today? Did you make any money money playing poker?

Occam’s razor, also spelled Ockham’s razor, also called law of economy or law of parsimony, principle stated by the Scholastic philosopher William of Ockham (1285–1347/49) that pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate, “plurality should not be posited without necessity.” The principle gives precedence to simplicity: of two competing theories, the simpler explanation of an entity is to be preferred. The principle is also expressed as “Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.”

Are there really lots of missing persons reports in Reno? I doubt it. There were 6 murders in Reno in 2018, so I would imagine the homicide department can spare a little time to help out with a search for a missing person.

Because we are part of the same community.

I don’t know any A-list celebrities like Justin Bieber or Barack Obama and have no idea how they are in real life. But I know a lot of people that are famous enough to get recognized on the street and all of them are “just like us” with regular non-famous friends.

Brad Booth certainly fits the criteria of a poker celebrity and that status comes with gossip and speculations. I don’t think that’s an issue as long as people keep it fair and reasonable.

Again, “famous pro” is up for interpretation but especially among online players I highly doubt the majority ever had a moment where they went broke. Sure, a lot of players bust their poker bankroll here and there but in the majority of cases that doesn’t really mean anything when you’re still in school and living with your parents or are a college student or something similar.

Old school gamblers went broke all the time where they needed to borrow money or rely on friends to support them. Brad Booth obviously was in that camp but we have no idea if he ever busted his life roll. You can be in serious debt while still having a bunch of assets, just ask Erik Lindgren.