Side Pot

One hundred percent fabricated. Zero percent regret.Refreshed 09/17/26

Heart Rate Cameras Read Phil Ivey At 48 For Six Hours

The production team behind a new cash game show spent Tuesday night trying to fix a camera that was working correctly, after its heart rate system reported Phil Ivey at 48 beats per minute for six straight hours.

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Jason Koon Must Give All Four Hall Of Fame Acceptance Speeches

Jason Koon was the only player to reach the 22-vote threshold for the Poker Hall of Fame's Class of 2026. On Monday the Hall confirmed he will be required to deliver all four acceptance speeches at this year's induction ceremony, after officials determined that the new multi-inductee format cannot run with fewer than four inductees.

Doug Polk Retires For Eleventh Time, Says This One Is Different

Doug Polk announced his retirement from professional poker Tuesday, the eleventh such announcement by unofficial count, telling fans in a fourteen-minute video that this one is 'actually different' before immediately teasing an unrelated announcement 'coming soon.' The video, titled 'Why I'm Really Done This Time (For Real),' was uploaded from what appeared to be the same office chair as retirement videos two, five, and nine.

Martin Kabrhel Wins Bracelet, Loses Argument With Vending Machine

Martin Kabrhel added a seventh WSOP bracelet to his collection Thursday while simultaneously conducting a heated, ultimately unsuccessful negotiation with a vending machine that had taken his dollar and given him nothing in return. Witnesses say Kabrhel, who was reportedly still seated at the final table when the dispute began, refused to leave the tournament floor to resolve it in person, instead shouting updates about both situations at once to anyone within earshot.

Alan Keating Has Never Once Checked His Lifetime Results

Alan Keating said in a brief interview this week that he has never once looked at a running total of his poker results, live or online, and does not plan to start now, a claim that stunned several high-stakes regulars who have spent years compiling his numbers for him without being asked.

Tom Dwan Breaks Two-Year Silence To Confirm He Is Still Alive

A one-line statement from Tom Dwan's camp confirmed Thursday that the notoriously private high-stakes legend remains alive and has no further comment, a five-word update that several poker outlets nonetheless treated as a major news event, running breaking-news graphics and, in one case, a countdown clock to a follow-up statement that never arrived.

Daniel Negreanu Provides Halftime Analysis At Charity Poker Night

Daniel Negreanu reportedly posted more than four hundred times during a single charity poker night this week, a pace that briefly made him responsible, by one estimate, for roughly a third of all poker-related posts anywhere online for the evening. At one point, according to multiple attendees, he paused the actual poker to deliver what he called 'a quick halftime read on the table,' despite the event not featuring halves, an intermission, or, as far as organizers could determine, any structural element that would call for one.

Jaime Staples Sets Exclamation Point Record In One River Reaction

Streamer Jaime Staples reportedly used eleven consecutive exclamation points reacting to a single river card Tuesday, a new personal best that edged out his previous record of nine, set during a separate broadcast that longtime viewers still reference by date. A viewer clipped the moment, ran it through an unofficial punctuation counter built specifically for tracking Staples's on-stream reactions, and posted the result to the stream's Discord, where it was pinned within minutes.

Phil Galfond Announces Galfond Challenge VI, Opponent: Himself

Phil Galfond announced a sixth installment of his high-stakes heads-up challenge series this week, this time against himself, a format change he described as 'the only opponent I know I can actually prepare for' and that guarantees, for the first time in the series' history, that at least one side of the bankroll will break even.

Michael Mizrachi Gives Fourth Retirement Speech Of The Week

Michael Mizrachi delivered another emotional retirement speech after winning his ninth WSOP bracelet Thursday, the fourth such speech by his own count that week alone, a run that has left tournament staff debating whether to keep the house microphone permanently reserved in his name.

Bryn Kenney Posts One Word, Poker Twitter Spends Six Hours On It

A one-word post from Bryn Kenney reading only 'interesting.' set off roughly six hours of speculative threads across poker Twitter this week, with no follow-up post from Kenney to resolve any of it, confirm what he meant, or acknowledge that anyone had noticed.

Allen Kessler Requests Recount After Losing Rock-Paper-Scissors

Allen Kessler formally requested a recount Tuesday after losing a game of rock-paper-scissors to a friend at a bar, telling those present that the reveal 'was not simultaneous by any reasonable structure standard' and that the result should be considered void pending review.

Klemens Roiter Reportedly Framing His Title-Winning Seven-Deuce

Klemens Roiter's first Triton title, won this week in Jeju after thirteen consecutive final tables with nothing to show for it, is real: a $20,000 No-Limit Hold'em Eight-Max win worth $771,000, sealed when a checked seven-deuce in the big blind improbably rivered a full house on a board of ten-seven-five-seven-five. What Roiter is allegedly doing with the actual seven-deuce he held to win it is not.

PokerStars Adds Event 122: An Inquiry Into Event 121's Field Size

PokerStars' real $6.5 million online festival, the World Championship of Online Poker, opened this week across 121 real tournaments running through September 30, with buy-ins spanning from $5.50 to $25,000 and combined guarantees on the six championship events alone topping $6.5 million. All of that is accurate, as reported. What is not real is Event 122.

Phil Hellmuth Files Restraining Order Against Variance

Phil Hellmuth appeared in a Las Vegas courtroom Tuesday to file for a restraining order against variance, the statistical concept he described in his petition as having engaged in 'a pattern of harassment spanning decades.' Hellmuth, who holds the record for most WSOP bracelets, told the judge that variance has 'shown up at every final table I've ever played' and 'has personally cost me at least eleven bracelets I clearly deserved.'

Allen Kessler Files Structure Complaint Against Golden Corral

Allen Kessler, the poker professional known industry-wide as 'Chainsaw' for his relentless criticism of tournament structures, has reportedly filed a formal written complaint with a Las Vegas Golden Corral regarding what he called 'an inadequate value-per-minute ratio in the buffet line.'

Phil Hellmuth Asks WSOP Why Allen Kessler Keeps Being Right

Phil Hellmuth called for a formal WSOP investigation into Allen Kessler this week, citing what he described as 'a suspicious pattern' of Kessler's structural complaints later being adopted as actual rule changes, a pattern Hellmuth said 'does not happen to me when I complain about losing,' a comparison he offered without apparent awareness of how it sounded.

Every story on this page is entirely invented. Nothing on this page happened.