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Today in the 3-Bet we find a crazy online conversation between Dan "jungleman12" Cates and Noah Boeken involving hired goons, stress levels in chess tournaments reaching scary levels and a chance to have your say in picking the Best EPT Moment Ever.
1) Boeken to Jungle: "Dont Send Hitman for Xmas"
Yeah, so that got weird.
Highstakesdb.com stumbled upon a very odd online chat yesterday between high-stakes foes Dan "jungleman12" Cates and Noah Boeken that careened everywhere from account sharing with Patrik Antonius to losing to Boeken's sister to Jungleman sending a hitman for Christmas.
No, really. It did. The apex of the convo:
w00ki3z: "you can go **** yourself" Exclusive: "ya" Exclusive: "just dont sent me a hitman for christmas" w00ki3z: "youre making it tempting" Exclusive: "guy wasnt even alone" Exclusive: "his whole family there" Exclusive: "ur sick" w00ki3z: "oh that?" w00ki3z: "i dont know anything about that guy"
Oh, dear. That can't be good. Or true, really. Full text of the chat on 2+2 here.
2) Chess More of a Sport. Also More Dangerous
While some Chess fans likely had a good laugh over the recent Reddit poll which ranked Chess much higher up the sporting pole than poker, they may not crow for very long. Like, long as in having the actual long-term ability to laugh.
A truly scary and tragic thing happened at the Chess Olympiad in Norway last week when two competitors died within hours of each other.
One, 67-year-old Kurt Meier, collapsed during his match on live TV and died later in the hospital. The other, 46-year-old Alisher Anarkulov of Uzbkekistan, was found dead in his hotel of, reportedly, natural causes.
Rather than being a one-off coincidence, death by chess has actually happened before. Latvians Vladimir Bagirov and Aivars Gipslis both suffered fatal attacks - the former a heart attack, the latter a stroke - while playing chess tournaments in 2000.
Australian Ian Rogers even retired from chess in 2007 on medical advice that the "stress of top-level competition was causing him serious health problems."
So, yeah, At least we have that working for us. Full report from The Guardian here.
3) Vote for Best Moment from EPTs Past
We have a feeling Olivier Busquet's miracle runner-runner yesterday will be in (and win) the next version of this contest 10 years from now, but unfortunately it didn't happen in time to make the cut.
In honor of the 100th-ever EPT main event live streaming as we speak in Barcelona PokerStars has put the call out to its fans to crown the Best EPT Moment Ever.
Eight moments have made the final cut to be voted on, and you can do so right here. There's a pretty miraculous runner-runner in there, too, but for our money nothing tops this one from the always inspiring Vicky Coren-Mitchell:
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