The PokerListings Daily 3-Bet is an inflatable party island with an attached cooler of drinks ready for a marathon float down the mid-afternoon poker news river.
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In today’s Daily 3-Bet we’ll take a look at Will Kassouf living the LA life, the GPL expanding to India and Jason Mercier runs some pregnancy numbers.
1) Kassouf Tackles LA
It seems that 2016 WSOP breakout star William Kassouf is only getting hotter in the US and A.
In the past few months Kassouf has played the WSOP again, appeared on an episode of Poker After Dark and is now playing the WPT Legends of Poker event at the Bicycle Casino.
It’s the first time that Kassouf has set foot in LA and he’s already been interviewed by several poker media publications, made it to the final 100 players at Legends and taken selfies with Phil Hellmuth, Scotty Nguyen and Mike “The Mouth” Matusow.
While Kassouf made life difficult for his opponents in the 2016 WSOP, it’s become pretty clear poker fans love his shtick.
In the past 10 years there are very few poker pros who have broken through and become legitimate household names in the industry.
Tom Dwan comes to mind, thanks to his epic High Stakes Poker appearances and so does YouTube sensation Doug Polk. Maybe you could add Jason Somerville and a few others but it’s not an incredibly long list.
Kassouf, perhaps to the chagrin of his detractors, certainly appears to be trending that way.
2) Global Poker League Expands to India
The flagship Global Poker League was essentially shuttered in Europe and North America after a rocky first season. But that hasn’t kept it from becoming a force in Asia.
By all accounts the Chinese GPL is doing just fine with eight teams and a multi-year deal with Sina Sports.
India will be following suit this year with six teams. The initial list of team names includes:
Delhi Diehards Mumbai Jetsetters Bengaluru Hackers Chennai Sharks Kolkata Creators Ahmedabad AlphasWe’ll take a Bengaluru Hackers jersey in black please!
In all seriousness the Indian poker market has been ripe for an explosion for years and we’re finally starting to see some of the best Indian players break through on the world circuit.
Hopefully the GPL will help motivate some of the players in the region and give it some positive light on a national scale.
Also of note is that the GPL mentioned an over-arching World Championship event that would pit teams from different countries against each other.
3) Mercier Puts Poker Spin on Pregnancy
This random observation from Jason Mercier about Lamaze class got a chuckle out of us. What can't you use poker terminology for?
Just think about this one for a second:
18% of pregnant women go into labor by their water breaking, before any contractions happen
"So Kings vs Aces ? Got it!" #LamazeClass
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