Poker News @ ICUFISH

Triple Crown winner Faraz “The-Toilet” Jaka is our feature guest on this week’s show.

Jeff “jeffbeesdat” Gray joins us to discuss his recent wins in the FTOPS $300 Cubed and the Full Tilt Sunday Brawl.

Well, skiing in Utah was great…until I crashed and broke my ankle!  I’m now forced to gimp limp around in my temporary cast.  This should sideline me from fighting for the next month (I was planning on taking some hardcore Japanese Ju Jitzu classes in Costa Rica per my usual), but I’ll welcome the break none the less.  I was going really fast (full of too much confidence, what else is new?) and crashed on the very last run of my second day skiing.  I ended up gathering myself and though it was painful…ended up skiing down the mountain with a broken ankle (not fun).  I went with a couple of poker buddies, Bevos_Nuts (who really is semi-nuts) and Graytambar (the nicest guy I’ve ever met and a great raw poker talent).  All and all the trip was great and I would do it all over again if I had to.  Bevo of course didn’t believe I was actually hurt and was ragging me, “Come on Maven, hurry up rock!”  At least I have the x-rays to now back me up…


A very memorable moment came the night after I crashed and burned.  We had intentions of going to eat at a nice steakhouse at the ski lodge we were staying at…only problem was, I couldn’t walk!  So, I bribed Graytambar into letting me piggy-back ride him for about a half of a mile all the way to the steakhouse in exchange for his meal (and wine, lots of it!).  This was after he’d already split a half gallon of Maker’s Mark with Bevo.  All and all a great trip and I’m looking forward to many more in the future.


I’ve spent the past couple of days in D/FW with my family.  I have a private training session lined up with a poker player in Dallas in a couple of days which I look forward to.  After that I’m off to Costa Rica for a week to pick up my girlfriend and take her back to Vegas with me.  Starting March 1st I’ll be competing in a Bluff Magazine challenge where they put $200 in my Lock Poker account and I’ll compete for one month with 20 other players to see who can run up the most amount of profits.  Winner of the contest gets the front cover of the magazine.  As usual, I plan on putting out 1000% effort and will do my best to win the contest and grace the magazine’s front cover (wouldn’t it be great if pocketfives had a monthly hardcopy magazine?).


Below is a quote from Chuck Liddell’s New York Times best-selling book Iceman which translates well to the field of poker:


“Being mentally tough is not a sometimes thing.  You don’t turn it on and off.  If you’re not mentally tough in the gym while you are training, then when you’re challenged in a fight, you will fold.  It doesn’t mean you have to be balls-out every time you work out.  But, when you are being pushed in training, you can’t just fold a couple of times because you feel that you’ve done enough that day.  Before you know it, when you get in a fight and are tired and beat-up and in a bad position, you will give up, too.  That was the point of the beatings.  If you were going to fight, you’d better be prepared—for anything.”

David Benefield from CardRunners.com joins us to talk about his appearances on Poker After Dark beginning February 16th.

Next week, I'm going skiing in Utah with my Kung Fu master and a few friends. I'm definitely looking forward to stepping away from the online felt and relaxing. The past couple of months have been very interesting, to say the least! I've been insanely busy training new students at Ari's training center, went crazy in December playing 15 plus hours a day to insure I won Bluff Magazine's 2008 Online Player of the Year Award, and I've only played maybe 9 or 10 days since the new year, but have already had a couple of big licks. My plan going forward is to play less volume and higher stakes mtt's a couple days a week.

I've looked at the 2009 WSOP schedule and am planning on playing somewhere around 20 events (double what I played last year). My confidence level has skyrocketed at games other than no limit since I've trained with some of the best PLO and PLO H/L players in the world. I've recently won a PLO rebuy on Pokerstars and got second in Absolute's Saturday PLO H/L…keep in mind that I was an inexperienced beginner a couple of months ago. I plan on playing the vast majority of the low to mid staked no limit, PLO, PLO H/L, limit, pot limit holdem, and mixed games…I'm setting aside six-figures for the 2009 WSOP.

I'm very thankful that I moved to Vegas, as it's opened up so many doors for me in such a short amount of time. Out of the blue I received a phone call and invite to play in a live cash game that was filmed and is to be featured on PokerVT in the very near future. The game featured myself, Daniel Negreanu, Josh Arieh, Jason “JCarver” Somerville, and Nick Rainey (Patrik Antonius' former manager and definitely a world-class talent). It'll make for interesting watching…I get it all in bad and suck out for a gazillion chips against the most aggro player at the table, JCarver. Negreanu and his team at PokerVT are top-notch and I'm extremely happy and honored to say that I've signed on as one of their featured pros. Already comprising some of the top online players in the world such as Annette_15 and Adam Junglen, it's great to see that they recently signed Moorman1 (I've offered to trade him all of the tricks I've used in my success in live poker for a glimpse at his unreal online game…I hope he takes me up on the offer). Unfortunately, Daniel's mom is very sick as of late and I know that is a heavy burden for him to carry…hopefully, she'll recover very soon. Our thoughts are with Daniel and his family. Thanks for reading my blog and as always, comments are much appreciated.