Here we go again... Daniel Negreanu and Doug Polk in another Twitter slap fight (featuring SrslySirius and Chicago Joey!)

[SrslySirius]

I think you're misunderstanding my analysis here.

I understand your point. I disagree with it.

Bashing Daniel is not the easy path to success and popularity. For one thing, in terms of raw views, those sort of videos are the least popular format. Putting pocket aces and a large dollar amount in the title/thumb is far more likely to crack 200k views, and takes waaaay less effort to make for both of us. That's the safe and easy way to rack up views, build an audience, and sell training products.

Calling out Stars/DNegs does appeal to much of the 2+2 sort of crowd, but that's a minority of people. You know how that goes, with the majority of your radio listeners being casual fans that don't get caught up in forum stuff. Casual poker fans love Daniel Negreanu and get very angry when you insult him. His influential friends and business partners obviously don't like it either.

If I'm being honest, from a purely strategic standpoint, taking DNegs to task is a terrible idea. It mostly just alienates people. Never was this more apparent than a few nights ago when the industry collectively made it very clear that Doug has no place in it. Surprisingly (to me) that was quite a punch to the gut. I guess everyone wants to feel accepted by their peers. As he said in yesterday's video, he'll never have another year like 2017. That was the last hurrah, and his colleagues basically said "don't let the door hit ya".

Really, not a whole lot of upside to taking stands like that. Most people just find you "unsavory". And in a harsh sort of irony, those same people will then accuse you of using drama for attention and profit, when it actually costs you both.

The only real reason to do it is if it's something you feel strongly about, which we both do. PokerStars is a cancer on the industry. They deserved to be frequently ridiculed, and those videos were fun and satisfying to make. It's especially satisfying because you know they're trying their hardest to control the narrative, sanitizing Twitch and YouTube with their paid spokesmen, and it must be infuriating to get constantly trolled before the biggest audience by someone who couldn't be bought.

So, again, Polk isn't wrong with what he's saying about Daniel, but I also think he's making it a bigger issue than it needs to be, because it's benefiting him at the same time.

To summarize, this is backwards. It should be made a bigger issue than it is, and more people should be making it. But it's detrimental to do so, which is probably why nobody does, including Doug who is moving on to other things.

[MrTickle]

Fair to say I just gained a massive amount of respect for Thomas and Doug.

[mulva]

i luv the polk parody of negranu lying down talking about how great rake is. another parody of negs doing this would be lol

[anonamoose]

You're doing God's work srsly, though the crypto videos are a bit over the top and too sarcastic for me.

Also wish Polk would go back to streaming. His original complaint was you can't compete with the riu streams, but they have been gone for almost a year now and shit streamers like lex and Kevin Martin have been getting a lot of attention despite being awful.

[SrslySirius]

You're doing God's work srsly, though the crypto videos are a bit over the top and too sarcastic for me.

Also wish Polk would go back to streaming. His original complaint was you can't compete with the riu streams, but they have been gone for almost a year now and shit streamers like lex and Kevin Martin have been getting a lot of attention despite being awful.

Twitch is a massive pain in the ass. I have enormous respect for the poker players who consistently do it, even the shitty ones. It just isn't worth doing for the effort it takes. Here's a mindblowing stat: watch time is comparable on YouTube. Not average watch time per user, obviously, since streams last for hours. But cumulative watch time. A 14-minute video will sometimes beat a 6-hour stream in total minutes watched, and always crush in unique viewers reached. Follower growth is also extremely slow on Twitch compared to YouTube, even if you're winning everything. If you want to see something sad, check out the SocialBlade pages for various poker streamers.

Poker is no longer the focus anyway, as mentioned before. Mostly going to be once-a-week hand breakdowns for the foreseeable future.

[Dan Druff]

I lost some respect for Daniel towards the end of the Supernova Elite saga.

Prior to that, I thought the 2p2 nerds and SNE grinders were giving him way too hard of a time. They had the unreasonable expectation that he either walk out of his million dollar contract or openly bash Pokerstars, neither of which were realistic. It's easy to say someone should do that when it's not your own money on the line. While I felt the Supernova Elite situation was shitty, it wasn't UB-superuser or Lock-Poker-not-paying-people shitty.

I felt that Daniel really was trying to get the situation resolved, which he didn't have to.

At that point, I still had a lot of respect for him.

However, when the whole thing was over, and Pokerstars basically said "fuck you" to the Supernova Elites with zero concessions made, I was very put off by Daniel's blog. He wrote a bullshit spin piece attempting to make this sound more reasonable, and then insulted the reader's intelligence by claiming that a million dollar freeroll (open to EVERYONE on Stars, not just the affected Supernova Elites) was somehow compensation for what happened.

I knew Daniel wasn't so stupid as to believe what he was writing, and I said to myself, "Wow... Daniel really just completely sold out with that blog."

I was surprised to see that.

[JACKDANIELS]

yeah todge i agree was also around that time he announced that there were big changes coming later in the year that would be " better than getting a bj from angelina jolie"

and then literally nothing happened apart from even more rake increases lol

[SysOp]

jeez what a BURGER Doug Polk is.

[Zap_the_Fractions_Giraffe]

Polk tries to look like the bass player from Blink 182 imo

[mulva]

Polk tries to look like the bass player from Blink 182 imo

go trig boy, it's your birthday.

[shortbuspoker]

doubt this is a serious rift forming, but Matt Savage has been Dnegs boy since back in the day

[mulva]

mo butta mo betta

[Sidewinder]

Does that Hall of Fame quadruple nit Steve Badger really have power at Pokersars??????

WTFFFFFFFFFFDDSFJDFKDSAFDA@!SAFWR#@#@$#@!$#OMG@!$! @FDSW%^&%$#QS!f!!SMH.........

[thesparten]

All i know is more rake AND less rake back AND no deposit bonus just is a win/win..

Better for the site and better for the players..

No huds would be the cherry on top..

#Fuckuallverymuch.

[Dan Druff]

This is a stupid argument about the whole big blind ante thing, which is becoming all the rage nowadays in tournaments (and might soon be the standard at the WSOP).

For those that don't know, a big blind ante tournament is one where antes are only posted by the big blind, and no one else posts them. This does give a 9-handed table 7 legitimate free hands.

This change is being made to speed up the pace of play, so the dealer doesn't have to hassle collecting each person's antes each hand. Instead, the BB just pays all 9 antes for everyone.

Personally, I think this is stupid. All this is doing is artificially increasing the BB in the ante stages.

Allen Kessler pointed out that this will just lead to more stalling before the BB if a table is about to break, and more "slow walking" when a table breaks and a player sees he's about to be moved to the BB.

Others pointed out that the larger BB will simply pot-commit too many short-stacks with garbage hands.

Furthermore, there is an absurd interpretation of this rule where a player "all-in on ante" in the BB will simply win his own ante back (and nothing else) if he wins the pot. This is because no one else is putting in an ante, so if the player "antes first" and doesn't have enough to put any chips on the BB, then he will get none of the money in the pot besides all antes -- which were his own chips to start!

So that's what Negreanu was arguing about.

He was against this "ante first" format, saying that it would anger recreational players who found themselves all-in on the BB ante in a 6-way pot, getting lucky to win it, and then simply getting their chips back instead of multiplying their tiny stack by 6 as they'd expect.

This led to a heated debate between Negreanu and Savage, at which point Negreanu said it was a "dick move" to run a tournament like this, and then Savage took it personally and got mad.

Here's a good discussion of the big blind ante situation on Pokernews: https://www.pokernews.com/news/2018/...cons-29848.htm

Anyway, I don't like this big blind ante crap at all, even if they do the interpretation Negreanu wants (blinds first, then ante).

If they are tired of antes slowing down the game, just increase the blinds a bit in each of the middle and later rounds, and do away with antes entirely.

[Shizzmoney]

And Polk gets the DN banhammer on twitter:

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/twt/status/981356514844774401

[Daly]

And Polk gets the DN banhammer on twitter:

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/twt/status/981356514844774401

Fucking incredible. What an asshole this makes DN look like.

[shortbuspoker]

Doug's troll game is strong

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/twt/status/1002596102330376192

[Daly]

[Dan Druff]

rofl it's a real website too