There are now a lot subscribers to this newsletter that are not in our poker club. Because of the Beginner Series and the postings on substack we have gained a lot of subscribers that have never played our Tuesday game. That’s ok. Welcome. I like the idea of expanding our reach to interested poker players even if they aren’t potential club members. However, if you are interested in playing our weekly game (the crux of the club), or just learning more about it, please visit the about page on the top of the page or click this link: About our game.

I say all this to warn the reader that today’s content is specific to our game and may not be of great interest to you if you don’t play in our weekly game. If this is the case, please tune in for future columns that are broader in poker scope.

Name: Panatda “Toy” Saenkham - Huntsinger
Handle: LittleToy
Pet Hand: KQs

Note: Toy is an English Second Language (ESL) woman and I decided to leave her answers as close as possible to her actual words for 2 reasons. Firstly, although I do edit some interviewees answers to create better cognitive and grammatical flow, I try to give to the reader a good idea of the experience that I had while conducting the interview. Secondly, I believe Toy did a great job in her answers in her own words. In some cases, I thought that her current way with English gave a perspective that editing wouldn’t be able to improve upon.

Me: How did you get the nickname Toy?

Toy: It’s a nickname that my family gave me. My older sister is Tai, I am Toi (Toy), and my youngest sister is Than. There isn’t a meaning but when moving to the states, it made for an easy nickname.

Me: What got you into poker?

Toy: I didn’t know poker in Thailand but when I moved to Memphis I was introduced to the game by my boss at the time. *laughing * He didn’t teach me the game, he only introduced me to the game. I didn’t win that time.

When I moved to Texas and met John (husband), I never seen him play Poker before but he met some people that wanted to play so he played with them time to time. He couldn’t find a tournament to play in College Station, so he invited me to play and taught me the basics that way I can play with him at home. I quickly learned that poker is fun because I can beat him sometimes on the poker. Other games like pool and ring toss I never win against him. If you never win you feel bored; you don’t want to play anymore. I feel with poker that this is my game. I feel that I can win against him sometimes.

Me: How important do you think speaking English well is at the poker table?

Toy: I don’t mind my accent. If someone starts talking to me, I talk to them. When I was in Memphis, I had a coworker from England with a very heavy accent. At the beginning, we could hardly understand each other. After a year, I could understand everything he said, but he still couldn’t understand me. At that point, it wasn’t my problem anymore. I made the effort to understand him, so I’m not sorry that he didn’t do the same for me.

Me: Do you prefer poker tournaments or cash game?

Toy: I like to play tournaments. I see it similar to playing chess or other board games that I think of my strategies, and I have a goal to win the tournament. Cash games often feel more like gambling to me. When you are down you want to win those dollars back and if you are up, you want more. That way of thinking feels closer to gambling. In Thailand, people generally don’t gamble, and poker is seen as gambling. If you play poker, people will usually think you’re a gambler (especially people in my career field)*laughs*. Although sometimes I play cash games too.

Me: Are you a live player or online player primarily?

Toy: I prefer playing live because playing online is difficult. You don’t know anyone, and no one knows you or how you play.

Me: Would you be ok with JJ (Toy and John’s son) playing poker when he gets older?

Toy: He is learning NOW! When I play online on Tuesday, he sometimes sits next to me and say, “Don’t fold this one; that one good hand!” He doesn’t know a straight and some of the depth of it, but he knows if I have King and King on the board that is good hand.

Me: What do you do for a living?

Toy: I am a senior scientist at the Galveston National Laboratory. My boss is a specialist in Coronavirus. So when Covid-19 hit the U.S., everyone come to him for collaborate research project about COVID. My background is molecular biology and mostly worked with infectious diseases which are caused by bacteria but he was kind enough to get me this job that is based on molecular biology, immunology, and virology. Currently, my research focuses on the role of viral infections in neurodegenerative processes, including Long COVID, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease.

Me: Is there anything about your job that relates to your work at the poker table?

Toy: I have learned that knowing I need to continue to learn is most important with any work. That is for poker and that is for the job too. If I did experiment and it was failed or didn’t give me the result that I expected, I have to trouble shoot what was wrong with it and planed for another experiment. In the same way, every time I played Poker either I won or got knocked out, I tried to figure out what made me win or get knocked out and tried to improve my play from there.

Me: You won a ticket to the WPT Prime $1100 on Club WPT Gold this past December.

Toy: I pay $30 per month to be in the club that allows me to play a certain number of tournaments for free with the membership and in some tournaments, you can earn some money if you win. I like to set goals for myself whenever I do something, and I also do it with Poker. I set my small goal to make the $30 back at least each month as basic. For big goal last year, I wanted to win a ticket to WPT. I did it and was satisfied for my big goal.

Now I have new goals to be a more serious player to play in larger tournaments as a 5-year goal. I want to be a poker pro, Lol

Me: What did you do to prepare yourself for this tournament – the biggest of your life so far?

Note to the reader: When asked, I sent Toy a lot of material for her to study for this tournament. I tried to help by offering low hanging fruit like preflop solver material as well as situational material that I thought would help with her game in this situation.

Toy: *looks at me funny as if the interviewer already knows the answer* - You give me some advice! Before, I played Poker with my instinct, and I have set my own rules that what hand I will play and what hand I will fold. When you sent me the tools, I thought OK now I know that I have to change the way I play because it is not only your hand but also I need to concern with other thing else like the position and the amount of chips I have left.

Me: How did you feel walking into the Wynn and playing in the biggest tournament you have ever played in a city where you don’t know anyone?

Toy: Excited. You have to beat 9000 people. The preflop game that you tried to tell me; I think it helped me a lot to hang for that long (7 hours). I think I don’t make it that far if I don’t study like I did.

Me: Was your competition very good?

Toy: Yes. They were very good. One player won the same prize as me but other than him they were all best skill that I see.

Me: What is one thing that you would tell “November Toy” to be prepared for? In other words, in what way were you the most unprepared?

Toy: I was so excited, I lost focus and wasn’t paying attention to all hands. I would try to stay concentrated and not talk so much and look at what people are doing.

Bonus question from a club member in the top 5 in this years points race (Note: these are the types of incentives you get for performance and participation in this group) : Does John (Toy’s Husband) always have pocket kings when he goes all in?

Toy: He always gets beat with the pocket kings. He is a little bit scared of this hand.

Me: Thank you Toy for sitting down with me and good luck in your poker progression.

In other club news…

• I should have mentioned in the January WSOP purse allocation news that we will not be making up the cancelled tournaments that came about because of PokerStars updates. When we looked at historical data, we saw that we missed the same number of dates as we do in a normal year because we often miss a gmae or two because of a holiday. This year we didn’t miss because of any holiday so it worked out.

  
  However, beginning next points year (May, 2026), we will be using a backup client (ClubGG) and the times that a cancellation happens because of PokerStars software, we will be playing at the backup client and points will be accumulated during those weeks. So, if you get a chance, get a free ClubGG membership and please pick the same handle you use on Stars to make it easy on us bean counters.

  
  If there are more problems that cause cancellations in THIS fiscal year, we will deal with them as they come without ruling out the possibility of makeup tournament(s).

  
  More to come on this in the coming months.

• You may have noticed that our club has a new logo. If you like it and are interested in potential apparel, patches…..etc, let me know as I am considering some options.

The time of year to announce our WSOP prize pool allocation is upon us. If you are new to the club, this is the time in our fiscal year that we have an idea of how much money we will have at the end of our points race - April 30th. As previously announced, we will have our drawing for $500 with each point serving as an entry into the drawing. However, the meat of the allocation goes into the expenses paid trip to Vegas for the WSOP.

The past couple years the prize pool has swelled to an amount that we felt should be distributed to more that one person taking the WSOP package as a whole. The compromise we found was second place taking $900 cash and the winner taking the rest to the desert.

The 2023 package was won by Joe Schwenk who took $3000, yours truly went in 2024 with $3750, and Dave Paukovitz took it down last year for $4230. Through these years the goal has been to offer opportunities to send club members on a trip that perhaps wouldn’t happen otherwise. The goal was never to enter a player into the Main Event or to give a percentage back to the club. It is simply to offer more experiences to our members.

If you have followed these newsletters for long - bless you - you know that a personal goal of mine has been to award multiple packages in a year and thus expanding the chances of this opportunity to each club member.

Well I am overwhelmed with excitement to announce that this is the year! The Freezeout Poker Club will be sending 2 of our players to Las Vegas this summer for some WSOP action.

Before I get into the details, let me say that this is because the members of this club. Your participation, recruitment, and feedback have made the growth of our membership and prize pool possible.

The first place an second place packages will, unfortunately, look very similar. We will take $500 for the drawing from the package total then divide the remainder by 2. This would give us 2 equal numbers. However, to create some modest delineation we will make the 1st prize slightly bigger. I decided that $30 times the number of points that separates 1st from 2nd place in points should do the trick.

Lets give an example and hopefully this we be more clear. Say the total prize pool comes to $6500. From this we take the $500 for the drawing - of which the 1st and 2nd place players are ineligible. That leaves us with $6000 to split between the 2 prizes. Lets assume that 1st place is leading by 10 points - as is currently the case. take the 10 points times $30 would equal to $300. 1st place prize would pay $300 more than the 2nd place so $6000 would break into $3150 and $2850 respectively.

The past 2 years we have stated that the winner must spend $2000 on WSOP bracelet event buyins. That seems a bit too restictive for prizes of this size considering these funds need to provide for airfare and lodging for the recipient. Therefore, we will be reducing the obligation to $800 in WSOP bracelet buyins. This should give our winning players plenty of opportunities to find a buyin this summer that works for them.

I do want to note that it is not lost on me that our current leader Chris Lannoye (ToyCollector) has a sizeable lead. This announcement is meant in no way as a reaction to that lead. If anyone has been deserving of a large merit based prize package it is this man for the way he has destroyed all of us on the virtual felt thus far.

This is just the timing that works for the growth and direction of this club and was going to happen at some point.

I hope that everyone participates and does their best to make a run at one of these prize packages and be sure to watch the leaderboard as we finish out these last 3 months!

In related news, I just got word from Joe Schwenk that our game tomorrow (2/3/26) will start at 6:00 pm central due to a PokerStars system update later that night. There will be a 1 hour late registration so please keep this time change in mind.

While I am at addressing the Club, I want to remind you that Joe, Jonathan, and I will be going over ideas and suggestions for changes next year (May 2026 - April 2027). I always ask for input before our annual meeting in March but am happy to hear from you anytime of the year. If you have something you would like for us to discuss as a potential change or suggestion, please let me know at mikieculpepper@gmail.com. We already have a few suggestions that I really like and want to hear some more. It’s your club. Tell us what you want to see.

With the anticipation of a new year, are we putting the old one in the trophy case or the rubbish bin? Well, from the Freezeout Poker Club perspective, it’s definately one for the case albeit not the center of the top shelf.

• 2025 brought us many new, consistent, responsible players. Player recruitment is the lifeblood of any indefinitely continuous activity. Thank you for all of our recruiters out there including a special thanks to Joe Schwenk and Dave Paukovitz this year. I love getting record crowds on a Tuesday. What I love even more are the weeks where everyone paid on time. It makes paying the prize pool seamless and easy. So a special thank you to all of you who are with this program.

• We also brought our newsletter to Substack. While I try to give the same quality newsletter to our club as before, we now have a newsletter subscription base that extends beyond our players. I’m hopeful that adding content for others will - organically - help build our game while making connections beyond.

• We had a new player win the player of the year WSOP package. Congratulations again to Mr. Paukovitz for bagging the largest monetary package yet.

• Joe and Joey Schwenk played a Tag Team event at Firekeepers this year and the Father & Son team took it down. Congratulations to Team Schwenk.

On a personal note, the First Lady and I final tabled a tournament in San Antonio to start 2025 off right. It made it so much more fun having my best friend with which to to share that experience even though she got the first place money and I had to settle for 4th.

I was also able to play in my first seniors event at the WSOP and played some of my best poker, brought some cash back to my bankroll, and bounced a Poker Hall of Famer from the tournament to boot.

After we cram our own personal last year where we feel it belongs, our focus should shift to the future and what we hope to claim as accomplishment in 2026. It seems to me that the best way to prepare is by setting goals for our poker year.

I would advise anyone who will listen to keep goals measureable. What I mean by this is don’t set a goal of winning a WSOP bracelet, winning our club Player of the Year, or making $5000. These goals - while worthy - are not good measuring sticks of personal improvement due to the nature of the high variance of tournament poker.

Examples of measureable goals would include: Play the Tuesday game 40 times next year, read 2 poker strategy books, or study NLH for an hour each week.

An example of a goal I accomplished over the past few years was writing in my journal every buyin, place, and prize for every tournament I enter. Not only does this keep me grounded when I feel like I am on a burst of wins, it also helps to boost my confidence when I am in the midst of a downswing. Being able to look back through the months and get a real picture on how well I am doing gives me the perspective that my memory simply can’t because of one bias or another.

My goals for 2026 include:

• Study for at least 2 hours each week

• Play our local live game when available and fresh enough

• Play in our Tuesday game 45 times

• Go to a regional nightly in Houston 5 times

• Go to a circuit event of any series

• Attend the WSOP.

• Write 25 of these newsletters.

Let me know what goals you plan on setting for you poker world in 2026 and lets see if we can hold each other accountable.

If you enjoy reading this newsletter, please consider liking it by clicking the “heart” below. It helps more than you may think. Thanks for reading.

There are now a lot subscribers to this newsletter that are not in our poker club. Because of the Beginner Series and the postings on substack we have gained a lot of subscribers that have never played our Tuesday game. That’s ok. Welcome. I like the idea of expanding our reach to interested poker players even if they aren’t potential club members. However, if you are interested in playing our weekly game (the crux of the club), or just learning more about it, please visit the about page on the top of the page or click this link: About our game.

I say all this to warn the reader that today’s content is specific to our game and may not be of great interest to you. If this is the case, please tune in for future columns that are broader in poker scope.

Name: Chris Lannoye
Handle: Toy Collector
Pet Hand: Nunya bizness
Favorite Author: Bill Bryson

Me: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me. I know you have only been a member for around a year so I’m not sure I have done many interviews in that time. You are my guinea pig for bringing back the player profiles.

Me: So how did you find our club?

Chris: Michael Thurston (MuskieMan) turned me on to your game. His daughter is dating my son. I was a little hesitant at first with Venmo and all but he put me at ease and I figured the worst that could happen would be I lose $25. But I have had a lot of fun and look forward to it each week.

Me: I completely understand about your initial hesitations. I am on the other side of it wondering if we can trust new players. I guess both sides just have to feel it out. That’s why we try to grow the group in a steady and organic way. I would like to take the time to thank Muskie for recruiting to our game. I sometimes wish he would recruit players that are not as good as you but, hey, that makes us all have to get better as well.

Me: When did you start playing poker?

Chris: I started playing post Moneymaker at a game while working at General Motors. I got my butt kicked left and right but it was a way to get my feet wet.

Me: What do you do for a living Chris?

Chris: I’m a pharmaceutical engineer

Me: I’m trying to imagine the need for a pharmaceutical engineer at GM.

Chris: (laughs) – My degree is in chemical engineering. I was hired to formulate auto paints. Once you get hired though, you end up doing a little bit of everything including programming the robots as a process engineer.

Me: Are you still in that line of work?

Chris: I’m mostly installing laboratories and industrial equipment for different industries for another company these days.

Me: We are halfway through this season and you are standing at 28 points. Just to put that into perspective, last year at this time, Joe Schwenk was leading the pack with 20 points and our eventual winner, Dave Paukovitz, had 14 points. That’s half of where you are at!

Chris: You are going to jinx me.

Me: That isn’t the intention but would be a great side effect for those of us chasing you. What I really want to know is if you have thought about winning a package to the WSOP and if that’s something you are striving for each week as it is a real possibility. Pauko won last year with 36 total points.

Chris: Absolutely. I really want to win a trip out to Vegas. I have never played in a “big” tournament. It would mean a lot to me for sure.

Me: I would imagine so if that’s the case. If you do win a package, perhaps you would do another interview with me or do a guest column on your experience. *eyes shift toward Mr. Paukovitz. *

Me: Do you study the game?

Chris: Not really. I’m not a big reader but I read the club blog and watch videos on YouTube. I really like watching Daniel Negreanu’s videos and especially his summer Vlog.

Me: Those are fun to watch. Are you looking for more poker games? You can always search Poker Atlas and perhaps find something near you.

Chris: I wasn’t aware of that site but I will check it out. I have to be careful because if I play too much, I will get impatient with it. If I stick with a limited amount of exposure to the game, I can keep my patience. If I have patience, I don’t play shit hands and I usually do well. If I’m impatient, I lose almost every time.

Me: Do you have a pet hand?

Chris: * Laughs * I do but I’m not going to tell you my secrets!

Me: Fair play. However, give me something that seems to be helping you this season.

Chris: Ok. While we are playing, I am walking on my treadmill the whole time. I go 9 miles each tournament. I am dripping wet by the time we are done. Apparently working out while playing works well for me.

Me: Thank you for taking the time to answer these question Chris! I’m sorry that I have to cut this short - I have to head out to buy a treadmill. I will see you on Tuesday.

Chris: See you then.

My Stars!

Tuesday the 4th marked the 3rd tournament that we had to cancel because of PokerStars updates. The problem is they do any necessary updates on Tuesdays in what is our evening. I suppose the interruptions we face are dictated by the number of times Stars needs to do an update.

To say that this is annoying me is a massive understatement but as they provide their software to us for free, I would imagine it to be a moot point to complain to the folks at Stars. The problems that arise from this (other than not being able to play our beautiful weekly game) are primarily WSOP prize package based.

Every opportunity to play a tournament is an opportunity to gather points and each week is assumed to bring that opportunity. However, as we trim those opportunities, the benefit goes to those who need not gather points (AHEM….I’m not speaking of anyone in particular ;) ). It also isn’t quite fair to do a makeup tournament on another day as some of our players may not be able to attend simply because they can not play on an alternate day of the week.

As an administrator of the group, it has long been my goal to have 2 prize packages at the end of the year. This is making that goal more difficult to achieve as well because of the potential deficit of funds.

A few suggestions have been floated to make our year whole including: Running the makeup weeks into the next season or hosting 2 tournaments at once on predetermined Tuesdays down the stretch (essentially multi-tabling). The reality is it is hard to make these up in a fair way while acknowledging that missing tournament is, in itself, unfair to members.

With this in mind, we will try to make the most fair decisions we can when it comes to this issue. I assure you that whatever decisions are to be made will be made by the end of January and be announced when the prize divisions are announced. That way everyone is on the same page going down the stretch.

As far as future seasons go, we are looking at the possibility of having a backup host (perhaps GGPoker) for the Tuesdays that get canceled or even, perhaps, changing our day of play.

If you have any suggestions, please let me know in the comments or shoot me an email.

For now though, until you hear something new, I hope to see you all on Tuesday at 7:00 Central on PokerStars. Thank you for your understanding.

Ride the Blue Wind High and Free…..

We lost one of our best. He was funny as hell, nice as can be, and a damn good poker player. Rex Bell - StarBockBeer saw his river card last weekend and his battle with cancer came to an end. I was very fortunate to have known his kindness, talent, and generosity of time when I did this interview with him last year.

Rex finished tied for 2nd place in the points last year despite missing many tournaments due to his illness. Heck he is only 4 points out of second place THIS year and definitely missed more than he attended.

We will miss you dearly my friend.

The “other” Toy

Last year, when making the decision on who to give the “up and comer” award, I was torn between Chris Lannoye (Toy Collector) and Toy Saenkham (Little Toy). At that time they were both overperforming for their amount of experience. The award went to Little Toy and for reasons gone over at great length in this very newsletter, a cloud of regret has hung over the part of my mind that hands out awards.

Weep not for me, as that dark cloud has dissipated and has been replaced by the confidence that I do have some good judgement left.

Toy won a major satellite on ClubWPTGold that puts her in the WPT Prime event in Las Vegas at the Wynn on December 7th. She bested 600 opponents to finish first of the 5 seats awarded. Not only is this feat very admirable, the ticket she won is a mid stakes tournament grinder’s dream with a retail price tag of $1100.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that, in my opinion, the Wynn is the best poker venue in Las Vegas so she will be playing in luxury.

Wrapping it up for fear that my jealousy is beginning to show, I think I speak for all of us when I say this club is rooting for you out there.

And in the words of Greg Raymer,

“Play smart and have fun!”

I say all this to warn the reader that today’s content is specific to our game and may not be of great interest to you. If this is the case, please tune in for future columns that are broarder in poker scope.

Welcome new players

We are excited to welcome 17 new registered players this season. These new members hail from Texas, South Carolina, Michigan, and Kentucky.

The 2024-2025 season (May-April) was our biggest player pool ever and we are going to break that this season. We have been averaging 27 players per Tuesday tournament. That’s up from 24 last season. While players come and go week by week and year by year, these numbers show that we are growing steadily.

Update on WSOP points race

Chris Lannoye. That is all. That is the full update. If you need more information, go to the points tally.

Player skill level

Having a tougher time getting weekly results? Assuming your name isn’t Chris Lannoye, the answer is probably yes. I know it has been more difficult for me. Well I’m here to tell you that it isn’t because your game has diminished.

The players in our club have gotten significantly more skilled as a whole in the past few years. Some of it is attributed to players cycling in and out of the game with some players hanging it up and new up and comers moving into those spots. However, another aspect to this phenomenon is our existing players’ improvement. I hope that this substack newsletter has helped a few of you and I know that some others are finding plenty of alternative places to study.

I am really glad that we are getting better as a whole. Sure it makes it harder to win each week, however, playing against better players is a great way to improve your own game and I think we all want that.

If you do find yourself falling behind and want to do something about it, shoot me a line and maybe I can point you toward some resources that can help. It’s always free to email me at mikieculpepper@gmail.com. If you aren’t sure where to start, find a hand you played that you are unsure of and we can go from there.

Update on WSOP prize packages

After reading the update on the WSOP points race above and checking out the points standings, you may find yourself feeling disenfranchised about your chances to win the package. If that’s the case, I am here to tell you to keep your nose to the grind stone and not just for the reason of grinding down your nose.

It will come as no surprise to you who have read a previous State of the Club addresses that I have had ambitions of multiple WSOP prize packages for a number of years now. We simply haven’t had the numbers to justify it.

Well, this year we are on track to make it a very close decision. Right now we are sitting at $3175 in the prize pool halfway through this season.

We make and announce the final payout decisions after the final tournament of January so we have some runway to figure it out. We are on track to make this leap. Let’s see if we stay on that track.

Where’s Dave Paukovitz?

One of the great mysteries of this September is the absence of TheNewHotPauko from our weekly game. Speculations range from our defending champion not being able to afford the $25 to having embarked on a September lent of sorts and denying himself the game that he loves.

My hope is of a different nature. I am dreaming that he is taking this time to write his experiences, trials, and tribulations of winning the 2025 WSOP package last year, taking the trip to Vegas, and his day 3 run in the WSOP Main Event!

If you are looking forward to reading this hypothetical manuscript of which I hint, hit the like (heart) button at the bottom of the page. I think he doesn’t realize how many are interested.

In summary

Wrapping it up, I want to thank you all for a great 6 months.

We successfully shifted the club to a new PokerStars destination, got everyone to move to the new venue that we have more control over, and are averaging more players per week than we ever have. All the while, we are still keeping this thing rake free.

Also, thanks to all of our players for paying reliably. Most of you are very timely and it is appreciated more than you may imagine.

Good luck to all of you in the second half of the season!

Every summer I try to do a couple things that I haven’t done. First, I like to play at a new venue. This year, we were able to visit and play at the Orleans. It was overall a nice venue and I wouldn’t be against going back. I also try to play a tournament of a game I have never played live before. This year - after my quick exit from the Wynn Seniors tournament - I ubered over to Resorts World to enter the Omaha 8 / Stud 8 mixed tournament. I have played a Stud 8 tournament but this was the first time I have played a true, mix of games, tournament.

Resorts World is very nice and the dealers were competent in the game. 8 games of each are played before switching back to the other. I am much better at Stud 8 than I am O8. That said, I held my own and finished 31st out of 79 runners.

The Seniors Bracelet Tournament

The First Lady and I try to theme our trip each year. 2 years ago was the Tag Team year and last year was Ladies Week. This year, I convinced my cousin John and close friend Kevin to join me in the Seniors Championship event with me being a newly minted senior.

The tournament was one of the most fun I have played - and for a lot of reasons. First, It was my first time playing against all seniors though the Galveston VFW game has given me some amount of practice over the years. Second, after dusting off half of my stack early when my set became garbage to a turned straight, I went on a bit of a sun run. I spent most of the day being the chip leader at my table and with the 1 hour blind structure, was able to do, for the most part, as I wished.

I finished day 1 with 179,500 which was well above average. I also managed to bust the biggest name ever for me in Terry Fleischer.

How hot is too hot?

Since I was able to get my day 1 through on flight A and didn’t have to fire another bullet into the flight B the next day, Adrienne and I decided to take the day off while John and Kevin worked the flight B.

We rented a car for the day and headed for Red Rock Canyon. Although it was around 112 degrees in Las Vegas, up in the mountains it was a cool sunny 98.

We have hiked many places around the world from rice patties in Vietnam, The jungles of Thailand, and Death Valley itself. Nothing compared to what we endured on this short 3 mile hike. It was an exhausting, unsteady scramble up to a dry waterfall (this is what they call a rock that sometimes is the host of falling water). On the way out, we decided that if we are fortunate enough to make it out alive, this would be the end of our hiking for the trip.

By the time we got back to our hotel, we passed out - sun burnt.

Day 2 - Seniors Championship

The new WSOP+ app allows you to view your competition at the table. I was able to see that the person to my immediate left had 575,000 chips! This was going to be difficult to navigate. As I scrolled further, a name caught my eye…. Juanda.

Yes. John Juanda was going to be at my table. 5 WSOP bracelets - Hall of Famer John Juanda.

When I got to my seat, I was thrilled to see that the very pleasant man to my left had 57,500 chips instead of the aforementioned half a million plus. So now, as I saw it, I just had to deal with the Hall of Famer.

Mr. Juanda, John as he insisted I call him, could not be a more professional and pleasant human being. He was very courteous to the dealers, his table mates and his masseuse. He was even smiles and modest while making his exit after I busted him.

It shouldn’t be a big thing for me as I know inferior opponents can win one hand very easily. But this is one I will never forget. I had a moment to take a photo and I know John wouldn’t have minded it. However, I chose discretion as I would want it against me. It was a simple hand in where I opened 99, John 3! jammed from the BB, and I called and ran clean against his AK. The idea that it isn’t every day that you have the chance to send a HOFer to the rail held more than zero weight in my decision.

The Suffering

In every tournament (that you don’t win), there seems to be a slippery slope of set backs. After running my stack to over 450,000 which was almost double the average stack, I ran JJ into AA, I flopped Top and Bottom only to have my opponent turn either better 2 or broadway?!? Then I lost AJs to A8o. The last of it was me shoving my 9 bigs in on the button and the BB was holding AA.

This colossal 1 hour beating took a toll on my psyche. I had just made my biggest cash in the event I have had my eyes on for years. I performed beyond expectations and it was eating me up.

After some perspective, and watching Kevin finish up his run, I am able to let it be and see it for another great experience. The ups and downs are part of tournament poker. Probably the best part.

The Rest

The rest of the trip had us at the aforementioned Orleans where Adrienne ran to dinner break but couldn’t catch a break with her hooks against AK and bubbled the event. The next and final day had us at Aria for a one day. I really like playing there but have never had much for results. That day was no different and our trip was in the books.

Another great one. Now it’s time to sweat Joe Schwenk, Ryan Conner, and of course Dave Paukovitz as they make their way out west. Good luck guys!

First off, the WSOP+ app is mandatory. If you are making the trip and plan on playing any WSOP event, go ahead and download it from the app store. If you have a Ceasar’s Rewards card, plug in your number and login. This will save you time when you get out there. If you don’t have a Rewards card, get in that line first when you get into a Ceasar’s property (Ceasar’s, Horseshoe, Paris, Planet Hollywood… etc).

Even if you prepare to the maximum when it comes to this app, you will still need to do a one time verification when you get to the grounds. Once your ducks are in line, you will go to the Paris Champagne room. Make sure to bring your I.D., rewards card, working email address, and GG Poker login (more on this in a moment) if you have it.

Now the upside of the app. It allows you (and anyone at home) to see the players at your table including stack sizes (the dealer updates on every break). Ryan let me in on the hack that if your opponents use their real names, you can look them up on The Hendon Mob to see what kind of tournament results they have logged through the years. Although it’s possible a player could be an online crusher that just doesn’t have a lot of live results, it at least gives you a good baseline for your opponents.

On top of this, you can take notes on your opponents in the app. These notes will stay on your app and if, by chance, you run into this player again, your old notes may give you some direction.

If you don’t want your opponents to know YOUR Hendon Mob results and you have a GG Poker account (even a free one), you can use your GG handle instead of your real name. I will be the Tennessee Rat in case anyone wants to follow along with my action. As an aside, I would imagine most pros or top regs will likely be using his GG handle so that may be a hint that a person is a recreational player if you see a real name.

Speaking of following the action, you can follow the people you are sweating just by opening the app, clicking on the tournament you want to see and searching the player’s name or handle.

A few words on Substack

As you have hopefully already gleaned, we have a new newsletter / website. I’m really excited to be on Substack as I think it is a good tool for growing this space.

Anyone can go to www.FreezeoutPoker.com and view the website by clicking the “not now” button on the bottom. However, I urge our users to subscribe to our Stack. It will help when it comes to following the action from Vegas, viewing the leaderboard, and getting push notifications if you decide to download the app. If you are a reader, it is a great place to find writers on most any subject.

Here is the way that I am going to use it:

1. I’m going to try to write something once a week

2. I’ll alternate between club information and strategy segments

3. I am able to schedule when I want a post released. This will help when I’m out of town or have a backlog of information. I can schedule it each week rather than bombard the readers all at once.

4. If a series, or a cluster of similar topic essays exist, they can be tagged and searched for easily to retrieve that information. In cases where a series is written, a button can be added to the navigation bat at the top. Point in case, I have added a button for the beginner series I am working on.

5. When I want to write something quick but don’t want the entire subscription base to be alerted, I will write it in “Notes”. Notes are accessible on the navigation bar on the top of the page. I will be using this for updates from the WSOP as I hope to update it multiple times a day. This will be the best way to get in depth up to date information.

6. At some point, I would like to invite other club members to write on poker subject matter as well. If you feel like you have something to offer, email me and lets discuss getting you access to your brains.

Some good news

As an update of a previous awareness campaign, it seems that Marty’s (WeaselClown) wife's recovery is going as well as could be expected. Marty said she is to be discharged next week though she has a long rehab ahead. Those of you fortunate enough to know Julie know that she is a fine lady. Even if she does make some questionable decisions when it came to a choosing a lifemate. ;)

2026 WSOP Points Leaderboard

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