partypoker

No, no, no, no.

I wonder if, and this is slightly off, but the recent move by, I think it's PartyPoker, to use real names in big tournaments online.

So they're forcing, I wonder if that'll change some of that behavior.

Like even the perception of, you know, now they're real people on the other side of the table, right?

I ...

Matt, I remember m- addressing s- mentioning this a couple days ago when we were on the phone, but I don't know the numbers or the details, but I do remember somewhere between 10 and 40 years ago, Party Poker increased the rake, and I remember thinking, "Oh, well, let's see what their revenue or what ..." Basically, no one cared.

The, they, they just made more money.

They lost some customers, of course, but it wasn't enough for them to have lost.

on parts of the timeline there.

How old were you when you binked the 580? You said it was PokerStars or PartyPoker? PokerStars.

PokerStars,

yeah.

So again, we were playing, like, these small stakes cash games in suburban Tucson, Arizona, and my friends and peers had no clue what they were doing.

Then I opened up the Party Poker lobby, uh, when I turned 18, when I turned 18, [laughs] uh, in 2004.

Uh, the first things I see are SNGs, sit and gos, right? I don't know anything.

I don't...

And just, like, stubborn as a mule, I just kept playing these $20 sit and gos, just burning $100 deposits over and over again.

I must have burned, like, 20, 30 of these $100 deposits, uh, before I eventually went and played cash.

I remember the first time I played cash, it was two/four no limit, and, like, I took the full 400, like, in my, uh, Party Poker account, and then just ran insanely hot that day.

Won, like, 2 or 3,000.

It's about, like, growing up.

It's about, you know, building deep friendships, you know, relationships with girls, et cetera, and I had that, but, but I can just think of too many nights that, that I really do regret where I told my friends, like, "Nah, I'm not gonna do this," and I would just sit there and, like, grind online poker, like, on eight tables, like the, the 10, 20 Party Poker, you know, and it's like- I don't know.

It ma- it makes me kinda sad to think about it, but also, like, if I didn't do that, who knows, like, how things would've ended up in poker, so.

Yeah, shit, at 10, 20 in, in college, like, yeah, you were, you were really doing it, [laughs] it sounds like.

Yeah, I rose up pretty quickly.

Like, to overs- to oversimplify it, like, uh, my freshman year, uh, things did not go well, like, the first, like, semester.

Um, I was used to playing, like, small stakes cash games against guys who were barely breathing, and I open up, like, the Party Poker lobby, and I don't know what, what the hell's going on.

Uh, and I see, like, $20 sit-and-go, so I just start playing those.