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Today in the 3-Bet we find the legendary Patrik Antonius returning to his equally legendary stomping grounds, Mike “Timex” McDonald falling just short of top-model perfection and Terrence Chan tackling the age-old question of poker pro as nit or risk taker.
1) Patrik Antonius Back in Action on Full Tilt Poker
One of the most profitable -- and handsomest -- players to ever play on Full Tilt Poker has returned to his old stomping grounds for the first time since Black Friday.
Patrik Antonius, former Red Pro and second all-time in profit on Full Tilt with $10 million according to highstakesdb.com, logged on Monday for the first time since its relaunch in November of last year.
How’d things go? Well, the Finnish pro got off to a rocky start and quickly found himself down $350k by Wednesday. Fortunately he straightened the wheels for a late-week comeback and lit up the $1,500/$3,000 mixed games yesterday for $486k.
With the victory he's now up over $100k on FTP 2.0. And it may only be a matter of time until he renews acquaintances with the red-hot Isildur1, which could change that number considerably.
Antonius won the biggest pot in online history, worth $1.3 million, from Isildur1 back in 2009 but said as a result of Black Friday he stood to lose about $5 million.
Antonius had been playing on PokerStars under the name FakeLove888 in the interim but didn’t have a ton of success there, down $1.6 million on that account.
2) Mike “Timex” McDonald: True 9 and Ultimate Luckbox
Speaking of handsome poker pros...
In one of the most truly bizarre forum posts we’ve ever read, poker-themed or otherwise, we found out that in the eyes of one strange man, poker pro Mike “Timex” McDonald could easily be a male model.
There’s no way to quite capture the magic of “Looks Scale 1-10 (Male and Female)" in our own words, so this blurb about Timex, who was the poster boy for a "9," can speak for it.
“This guy is seriously the ultimate luck box in life, he’s an extremely rich young guy, very talented, and on top of it all is very genetically blessed.
“I avoided this question during my AMA, but I could see Timex ease into the modeling word with ease.”
How he didn’t make a 10 is beyond us, but still.
Go there now; bring something for the tears.
3) Terrence Chan: Sicko at Cards, Nit at Life?
Poker vet Terrence Chan has taken a random question from a date with a neuroscientist and turned it into an intriguing blog post about the real level of "risk-raking" in the poker life.
The theory, his date said, was individuals with larger prefrontal lobes are more inclined towards "risk-taking behaviors" - public perception being poker is a "risk-taking" activity.
Chan's personal experience and recent conversations with poker pros Ramzi Jelassi and Max Silver tell him it's not so clear cut, though:
“For most regular folks, the idea that there are people even walking around with $1000, $10000, or $100000 of cash on a regular basis strikes them as incredibly risky, much less gambling it in a poker tournament with less than a 15% chance of getting any of it back.
“But I'm not convinced that poker players are that much more risk-seeking than the rest of the population; rather, they have simply become very good at compartmentalizing that risk.
“What else would explain all the self-proclaimed life nits in the poker world?
“I dislike it when people not in the poker world say, ‘I could never do that; I'm not much of a gambler.’ Everyone gambles, because everything is a gamble.”
Another great post from a future subject of our mini-documentary series, Easy Game. Check the full post here.
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