I suggest reading the entire thread for the rest of the story. It is a cautionary tale about the dangers of lying to yourself along with others, even if you do know what you should do.

At the very least I suggest just folding 3-6 from early position. Actually you should probably fold it from every position every time, but definitely don't play it from EP.

What happened to Dgiharris? He hasn't posted in almost 2 years?

He's locked in the basement with Tom Dwan.

Not saying this as hindsight, but I always thought his advice was very suspect. But he gets a free pass here than he would otherwise if he posted in the other strategy boards.

Wow, some real hatred for the 63. It's a pretty good hand.

There were clues all was not as it seemed if you looked hard enough. What I found disconcerting (at the time...not any more) was that he became a mod, and then no real explanation as to what happened. I kinda thought a mod might have to go through some sort of due diligence or something.

Silly me.

His more meta advice was spot on but some of his tactical analysis didn't bear much scrutiny.

If you think that a green title certifies good strategy advice, you're guaranteed to be mistaken. On some forums, most mods are stone-cold poker crushers. Others are people you'd want at any table you played. We greens are people who tend to be nice to new posters and who tend to deescalate disagreements. You'll have to come to your own conclusion as to poker ability, just like all other posters. Modding is orthogonal to poker skill. I'm modding on the PokerCast forum, and my entire job is to play Whack-a-Mole with Korean spammers. Being a strong player isn't a requirement of the job.

Dgiharris was a super nice guy who treated newer posters with respect, so even though i have no insight into how he was asked to mod here, seemed a great choice.
Poker advice or not, everyone has to come to their own decision. Could be he was a terrible (or great) NL player. Here's the lesson I'd take. Before reading any of the rest, I'm just a guy who saw his posts and I'm guaranteed to have some or all details wrong.

Dgiharris was making short rolled shots into a really big NL game (10/25 blinds?). He was also taking shots into bigger tournaments. Even though he was selling action, I think he probably needed a 6 figure roll to take those shots and play in those tournaments. If you do things that require a huge roll and you don't have one, your likelihood of going broke is big. Eventually it will catch up with you.

Playing under-rolled means any bad luck (or small amounts of bad play), lead to disaster. You'll miss a couple shots, bubble a couple tournaments, and then you'll run breakeven or worse in your normal games. That's just life as a poker pro. I don't care about your edge, if you take shots often they are no longer "I have a little extra money, so I'll take a risk" and more indicative of needing a big enough roll. Then, you're on the edge of broke. People who stick around a long time either A) don't do this stuff or B) run hot when they do.

The site's stance is that mods are just posters, and as such there are mods of various levels of poker skill. Even if they had a skill requirement, it would be easy for them to overlook DGI who presented himself as an authority on poker. Also, he was a mod in the beginner's forum. The skill level needed to give good advice in here is not necessarily that high.

For him to take shots at 10/25 was nonsensical considering he had never even beaten 5/T as his regular game. The levels get tougher as you move up and if he had been able to beat 5/T+ he would have been playing it as his regular game long before. As I read through his thread, I noticed many hands that were misplayed and as I recall he didn't recognize how he misplayed these hands.

Then another poster from his casino exposed dgi as being a whale that grinders wanted at their table. Ie a guy that limp calls a lot, and puts a lot of money in the middle with mediocre draws. My initial thought was the same as what I thought when he played on Live at the Bike: dgi is a winning low stakes player that plays very poorly at times. That's an affliction some good players struggle with at times (myself included). However, the thing that is most damning about this is that DGI never returned to the forums to defend himself against these accusations. It was as if his true identity had been exposed and he just wanted to flee from the truth. Then someone found an old post on another forum where dgi admitted to creating a new screenname (dgiharris) to give himself a new online identity as a crushing poker player. It was as if he was living in a fantasy world online.

That being said, I do agree that some of his meta advice was pretty good....actually, I would call much of it a bit overkill. It's pretty obvious that he didn't follow his own advice because if he did he would be the hardest working player in poker and would be a much better player than he is.

Allow me to clarify.

I made no comment about his poker advice (none what so ever, neither above, nor anywhere else). Ditto, zero comment about his posting or persona.

My comment was I was unsure of the veracity of some of his posts (I did a little digging on a couple, nothing dramatic, but enough to raise my eyebrows). My eyebrows also raise a tad when folk get a little "sensitive", about said dude.

But hey ho, it's really no big deal - just serves to remind all that this is the internet & poker.

Caveat Emptor.

Edit, typed my post before I read the post above.

That was something I though was a possibility years back, before he was made a MOD, I was very much still a noob though.

I'll leave others to decide if he was a fitting choice for a BQ MOD.

I'm out of this one.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I agree with you that the situation was handled very poorly. The thread was locked and the whole thing appeared to be swept under the rug.

Truth

It was explained why it was locked.

He was demodded because he literally stopped logging in as dgiharris for many months. At the time, Mat Sklansky was cleaning up the ranks of the mods who were no longer modding. He fit that profile and has since.

As for where he fit on the strategy knowledge scheme of things, I remind people that to Phil Ivey, everyone who posts strat on 2+2 is a fish. There is a natural limit as to where people provide knowledge at no charge. IMO, dgiharris wasn't the best, but certainly wasn't anywhere near the worst poster. People did learn from him good things.

It is extremely hard to fight the gambling bug. Poker requires you to scratch the itch just enough to profit but not get consumed by it. If you still are around after a while, you'll end up knowing lots of people who don't make it through. dgiharris was one of them. How you react to them will say more about you than about them.

dangernoodle for mod 2017

i will be the noodle this forum deserves

Thank you for this post, Venice10. There is true wisdom in your words!

Lee

Am I bad when the main thing I take from this thread is "what muppet outs a whale?"

I was more disappointed that he wasn't a true success story. It's like watching your favorite wrestler on WWF (WWE now) and then finding out he's just a jobber paid to lose matches. I take no enjoyment in someone's downfall, but I hope he doesn't have a serious gambling problem.

There are mods here?

It's all out there to peruse and, as we should, wish all players well when we aren't playing against them. Not so sure I ever met him, but I think he was grinding in Michigan for a bit before he headed west for bigger aspirations.

I have a niece who I just saw home for Christmas. She would be a damn good dancer/actor/model in our region, but she is in Cali chasing the 'bigger and better'. She didn't look good/happy ... I hope she has the courage (and luck) to get to a satisfying position in life. GL

Good Morning,

I've enjoyed reading your turning pro thread.

I did have a question about the steps, as a large part of the beginning steps are proving yourself at the micros, and playing online is unavailable to me.

You state that after beating online for some time and saving money from your 9-5 that you can start playing 1/2 live with a 3k roll.

What would you suggest if live poker is available to a player but online is not? Would you still suggest a 3k dedicated solely to poker, or would there be a different type of guideline, assuming one has a surplus $400- $500 a week from their 9-5, and two days off a week.

Thank you for your thread and for taking the time to read this.

If you have $500 surplus every week then it shouldn't take you very long to get the recommended $3k. By my math that is approximately 6 weeks?

Why do you say online poker is not available to you? In the USA you can still play on Ignition or America's Card Room.

So dgi is not a poker pro winning player he claims to be.

What happened exactly? Maybe I missed it in the thread but it looks like DGI just stopped posting at some point in 2015? Can anyone elaborate?

Read his thread: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...inder-1333131/

Essentially he took ambitious shots at games several levels above where he normally plays and he went busto. You can judge for yourself but my view (as one of his last defenders) is that a player in these forums exposed him as a losing player and then rather than denying these allegations he tucked tail and ran never to be seen here again. Albeit, he was seen in Christian forums right after this incident and has been seen playing 1/3 at the casino some.

Curious if DGI has a new 2+2 account he posts on or found a new poker forum to frequent since usually someone who posts as much as he did on a forum doesn't just quit cold turkey, obviously he left the dgiharris persona since he got called out and decided he did not want to defend himself / face realities. Even if he just admitted he had a problem / was not beating the stakes he was playing etc and just kept posting helping beginners / rebuilding and working on problems the drama would probably blow over but oh well, enough time is passed to see he is likely not coming back as dgiharris.