Week In Review #63 June 21-27 2026

My Fictional Poker HOF Ballot

The Poker Hall of Fame recently changed their induction process such that a fan vote determines the final eight eligible for induction and the existing living members vote on who gets inducted. By my count the NBA, NHL, NFL, and MLB Hall of Fames induct around 1-3% of players who played in at least one game. My (very rough) proxy for this WSOP-based institution is that anyone who has cashed for six figures at the WSOP is someone who has “played a game” in the majors. There are 7,735 people that is true of, apologies to Fabien Gun and his $99,999 in WSOP cashes. There are 69 people currently inducted in the HOF and there is definitely a backlog, we are not even at 1% of people who have six figure WSOP cashes.

The eight people chosen by public write-in vote this year are Justin Bonomo, Shaun Deeb, Isaac Haxton, Jason Koon Mike Matusow, Chris Moorman, Isai Scheinberg, and Scott Seiver. While I have my own criteria for what should make a candidate HOF worthy, in this fake ballot I will honour the criteria outlined on the HOF’s website

Respected by Peers
A player must have played poker against acknowledged top competition

Age of Experience
Be a minimum of 40 years old at time of nomination

High Stakes Experience
Played for high stakes

Consistent Excellence
Played consistently well, gaining the respect of peers

Legacy That Lasts
Stood the test of time

Shaped the Game
Or, for non-players, contributed to the overall growth and success of the game of poker, with indelible positive and lasting results.

Of the 8 people eligible, I think more than four should be inducted, but you can only pick four. I will go through each individual, case by case, and come up with a comparison of a similar career that made (or didn’t make another HOF)

Isaac Haxton: He’s 7th on the all time money list and should pass Justin Bonomo very soon and be in 6th place. Given he plays PLO and Short Deck, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him pass Adrian Mateos or Mikita Badziakouski and be in fourth by the start of the 2027 WSOP. He has won in every format of poker: Online cash, live cash, online tournaments, live tournaments. He has played NLH, PLO, Short Deck and mixed games and won in them. He’s won in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The first live tournament he cashed, featured a legendary bluff, fitting for the legendary career that would follow.

He has also been a good steward of the game, moderating the HS forum on 2p2, working with tournament directors to improve structures and being an ambassador for PokerStars and PartyPoker. As an ambassador he always had player’s interest in mind and took a principled stand and left Pokerstars when they reneged on Supernova Elite benefits. He’s also been a large action buyer in SHRs and the current SHR tournament scene would not look like it without Ike’s play or his capital. An slam dunk induction who easily clears the bar.

Player Comp: Someone who burst on the scene and was immediately great. Has a good argument for being the GOAT, but is rarely included in the GOAT conversation. Has been a good steward for the game and a role model for what a life in poker should look like. Wears glasses while playing. The comp here is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Isai Schienberg

He founded PokerStars, which created the EPT. PokerStars is still running and is probably the most successful and least scummy online poker site of all time. The EPT is the gold standard for a live poker tour. If you have your hand in the founding of both, you get inducted.

Player Comp: It’s harder to find a comp for Isai, so I am going to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and picking an artist who did not invent, but was responsible for fostering a technological change that changed the game forever, Grandmaster Flash.

Mike Matusow

There is a logjam of deserving candidates, so let me first eliminate an undeserving one. Mike Matusow has won 7 open poker tournaments in his life. To his credit, four of them are WSOP bracelets, he has also final tabled the WSOP Main Event and finished second and third in a WPT event in the golden era. It’s an impressive career, but he has been nominated and rejected for the HOF 11 times. Here is a list of living non-HOFers over 40 who have won more WSOP bracelets in Vegas than Matusow: John Monette, Robert Mizrachi, Jeff Madsen, Adam Friedman, Allen Cunningham, David Chiu, Daniel Alaei, Chris Ferguson, Jason Mercier, Brian Hastings, Ted Forrest, Josh Arieh and let’s not forget two of our nominees this year Scott Seiver and Shaun Deeb. Matusow does not come close to meeting the bar for induction.

My player comp is to another annoying character who was never all that skilled. I can’t believe I was first introduced to them twenty years ago and they are still peripheral figures in my life: Sean Avery.

Chris Moorman

A “Hall of Very Good” guy to me. He has had a long career and at his peak played more than anyone. He was a legendary grinder and a legendary backer. As with Ike, I am not sure if that should affect his HOF candidacy, but it is part of his story. While he was respected by his peers, he didn’t consistently play the highest stakes and was more or less a one trick pony, only playing NLH tournaments. I don’t think there was ever a period of time where he was considered the best in the world. If you’re a big hall person and think ~3% of 100k+ cashers should be inducted, I could make the case for him, but as is he’s an almost exclusively NLH tournament player and is not one of the 10 best NLH tournament players eligible for induction.

Player Comp: A very long career with some high highs, but was never in the MVP discussion. Julio Franco.

Justin Bonomo, Shaun Deeb, Jason Koon, Scott Seiver.

Before the nominees were selected I posted that “Justin Bonomo should be a first ballot lock”. Upon seeing the ballot, I realized that if there are five “first ballot locks” in my head, I can’t actually pick all five and need to make some tough choices. So much so that I’ll need a week to marinate on which ones I pick. I’ll write about them all in next Sunday’s Week in Review. Remember to subscribe so you can read my thoughts and more.

Additional Sims For Premium Subscribers

Premium Subscribers are given access to a Google Drive folder where they will also be able to download the raw files of sims I used to write my POTDs, sims that are more accurate and appropriate than equivalent sims in the big public libraries. The past week I uploaded

• Two PIO sims looking at two different c-bet strategies for POTD #297

• A PIO sim using preflop ranges that account for inequal stacks for POTD #298

• An HRC sim for POTD #299

Additional Analysis for Premium Subscribers

Everyday Premium Subscribers get an extra bit of analysis not included in the main post. Today, I’ll share #onemorething from POTD #298, where I wrote about how deep stack preflop ranges change postflop when there is a shortstack who can squeeze all-in behind.

POTD #298 #onemorething

One theory I had about this hand was that if Kevin is supposed to bluff a lot of low suited connectors on the river, especially ones with 5x or 7x in them. That I should be more inclined to fold the river because this hand begun with a shortstack in the SB. My reasoning was that with a shortstack in the SB Kevin might mix preflop folds with hands like 6s5s, but never 77 or AQ so he should have fewer bluffs and roughly the same number of value bets. However, it looks like the presence of the shortstack makes Kevin more likely to just call with a weak suited connector preflop.

In this lineup Kevin rarely three bets suited connectors preflop because he doesn’t want to get shoved on by the SB and have to fold. If we were all 50+ bbs deep he’d three bet them regularly. So Kevin has hands like 65s almost pure that he might only flat 60% of the time in a deepstacked set up.

This doesn’t really matter in real poker. I’ll never know Kevin’s exact preflop range here. I don’t know if the presence of a shortish stack in the SB will materially affect his preflop strategy with JTo, KTo or 65s. He has so many chips, he might not even notice the shorter SB. The thing that I do think matters here in the post-hand analysis is to always test your assumptions. My supposition that Kevin will flat fewer suited connectors made sense, and it would make sense if the SB had 12bbs, but 25bbs is deep enough where the SB can’t just shove A8o. So the button still gets to flat with 65s, but chooses not to three bet it. If anything the SB makes the river more of a call, not less of one.

Media

Most of the media I have consumed this week has been drowsily listening to a podcast while feeding a newborn at 3AM. It’s been a tiring week and I’ve needed some upbeat music to help me stay awake during the day. An album that has been putting some pep in my step and helping me write quality blogs is the new Vince Staples album Cry Baby. I am closing in on 40, which means I am not just losing my edge and listening to old favourites instead of exploring the music of new artists, but it also means I’m regularly skipping new work from some of my favourites. Vince Staples has been one of my favourite rappers for some time, but for whatever reason the past couple albums did not grab me (or I might have missed that they were released all together). This album had me hooked from the jump, I love the production, Vince’s rapping and as always Vince’s joke writing. It has also added another song to the canon of songs that make a joke about Richard Pryor freebasing cocaine. However, it’s not just me that is a fan of the album power POTD commenter and Sunday Special submitter Sid has also praised this album in the POTD Discord. Check it out.

As always, I can be reached on

Substack
Instagram
Twitter
Bluesky