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Today in the 3-Bet we find Phil Ivey taking his rightful place among American royalty, a Federal Judge muses about meat-based nicknames and Charlie Carrel provides a parental PowerPoint epiphany.
1) Ivey: King of America
As far as we know Phil Ivey doesn't actually drive a Chrysler 300.
He definitely makes you want to get one, though. And extremely cool to see him take his place among the "new American royalty:"
2) What's With the Meat Names?
So, retired New York Police Department officer Ralph Mastrantonio was convicted yesterday of running an illegal "gambling den" called "5th Street" on Staten Island.
The 55-year-old now faces up to five years in prison for running raked Texas Hold'em games when his sentencing hearing arrives later this year.
While normally we'd say "please quit arresting people for playing poker," US attorney Matthew Miller made a pretty good point in his presentation to the jury:
"You can't just open a casino in a commercial building in Staten Island. Dealing cards in an unlicensed gambling business is illegal."
Rumored (and unproven) connections to organized crime aside, you can't argue with the prosecution there really.
The funniest line of the day, however, belonged to Federal Judge Sterling Johnson. When told of the "colorful" participants in the games with nicknames that include "Porky Joe," "Joe the Beef" and "Handsome Mike," Johnson replied:
"I don't know the relevance of these meat names." Wp, sir. Full details from NY Daily News here.
3) Not Sure About Poker? Let Me Refer You to Slide #12
While we're always still a little bit surprised to hear in 2015 that the average Joe still thinks of poker as gambling, we can understand how parents of a teenage grinder can be a little wary.
It's not exactly the most understandable way to make a living for a generation that grew up on four TV channels and powdered eggs.
We do love, though, when a young player takes a clinical, reasonable, statistical approach to prove he knows exactly what he's talking about.
Case in point: Young Brit Charlie "Epiphany77" Carrel. We profiled his meteoric (if fortunate) rise from $15 to $500k late last year and, after an impressive showing at EPT Malta, the PokerStars blog followed suit with a new interview.
In it he describes how, as his poker career began to take off, his parents began to get a little worried. Carrel's response:
"My mum and my step-dad had what amounted to an intervention where they said I needed to stop gambling.
So, I prepared a big power point presentation and came down with graphs and expected value and showed them my past papers of A-level that I was crushing.
"They eventually understood the graphs but not straight away."
Which, well, is brilliant. We obviously don't recommend the Charlie Carrel path to just anybody but if you have what it takes - and the PowerPoint to back it up - you at least deserve a shot. Full interview here.
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