Week In Review #63 June 28- July 4th 2026
Sam's HOF Ballot Pt 2
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Last week, I wrote about four of the eight people on this year’s HOF ballot. I felt two of the nominees were clear yays, one was a clear nay, and one was a more respectful nay. I closed the post with a cliffhanger promising to write about four cases who I think deserve HOF induction, but I can only pick two. So here I am to write about Justin Bonomo, Shaun Deeb, Jason Koon, and Scott Seiver.
Justin Bonomo
I think all four of these guys are HOFers, I predict at least two of them will get in this year, and I am rather confident that ZJ will be the odd man out. Even before October 7th 2023, Justin has always been very vocal about his views on everything, including hot-button issues like politics and gender. Justin is a friend of mine, and I know firsthand how frustrating and exhausting it can be to argue with him. Many of the voters are not his friends. They also find rhetorical style to be frustrating and exhausting, but more relevant is that they find his worldview to be repugnant. I’ve seen some people argue that this means he does not have the “respect of his peers” and should not be in the HOF. This is a bad faith argument; it seems pretty clear that the criteria is that he should have the respect of his peers … at the poker table. If inclusion for the HOF starts extending to posts, takes, and political opinions, the whole HOF might need to be blown up.
So let me make the case for Justin: When I started playing SnGs, he had the biggest winrate at high-stakes SnGs. He got caught multi-accounting, and unlike the other people caught multi-accounting at the time, he showed real contrition, honoured the bans, and became one of the first online poker players to become a full-time live tournament grinder. After years of good behaviour, his ban was overturned, and he has since been a model citizen when it comes to following the rules on the felt. He has played online and live cash and tournaments and mixed games. He came second in the $50k PPC in 2016. In 2019, he had one of the greatest stretches in SHR history, winning SHRB Macau for $4.8M, SHRB IV in Vegas for $5M, and the $1,000,000 Buy-in Big One for One Drop for $10,000,000 in a four-month span. He is one of a handful of people who, post-Moneymaker boom, can say they were number one on the all-time money list. He has a ton of success, plays a variety of formats of poker, and is one of the indelible characters of the game. He should be in. However, in this exercise I can only vote for two of the four people remaining, and I am choosing to vote strategically. I think Justin would agree with me that it’s unlikely the committee would pick him, and he’d understand my decision to vote for people with a better chance of induction. Sorry Justin. You’ll have to wait until next year.
NB: The only player I know for a fact is turning 40 next year is Ben Tollerene, and that’s because his online screenname ends in 86. It’s possible Justin will have some more stiff competition next year, but if four people get inducted this year. Justin has my hypothetical vote nextyear.
Player Comp: A player who early in his career was punished for infractions that in hindsight were much more widespread than initially believed, infractions that have since become so commonplace that people don’t even really care anymore and they’re hardly punished. He had a peak where he was the best in the world and one of the most thrilling players to watch, but he ended up having a career shorter than expected (unless Justin ends up returning to poker full time in the future). The comp is Derrick Rose.
Jason Koon
Jason is #3 on the all-time money list and with a good year could pass Stephen Chidwick for #2. With two good years, he could conceivably pass Bryn Kenney and become #1. He’s won NLH, PLO, and Short Deck tournaments, and NLH and Short Deck cash games. When Short Deck was the game played for the highest stakes in the world, he was the best Short Deck player in the world. He’s a no-doubt HOFer, but once again there is a logjam, and I need to make some tough calls. He’s been an ambassador for several poker sites, and if you care about the “fame” of the Hall of Fame, he is as famous as any poker player of his generation. He has my vote on this hypothetical ballot.
Player Comp: A guy who was born and raised in a small town and became a pro at a relatively young age, but had some early career growing pains before he became a star. A famously hard worker who you would never want to get in a fight with. Nolan Ryan.
Shaun Deeb and Scott Seiver
And then there were two. [Hey guys! Come on the show! -ed] I’ll preface this by saying I am pretty sure both Deeb and Seiver will get in this year. While Isai Schienberg is on my ballot, he’s been denied induction by the Hall a couple of times already, and I doubt they’ll pick him this year. I would suspect Deeb, Haxton, Koon and Seiver all get inducted this year, especially because Deeb has three FTs at this year’s WSOP, including one finish in second place and winning his 9th bracelet. However, in my fictional bracket, you can only pick one.
Shaun and Scott are both naturally talented games players who have done relatively little off-table work after being top NLH players. They both found a second life as mixed-game players. They are two of the biggest characters in this generation and have always been at the centre of the discourse. Shaun has some memorable moments, like his weight loss bet with Bill Perkins, and some lowlights, like playing the WSOP ladies event, while Scott’s table talk is consistently enjoyable and has led to some highlight reel hands. In deciding between the two, I looked back at the HOF criteria and noticed that the first piece or criteria is “A player must have played poker against acknowledged top competition.” I think Scott has a clear edge over Shaun here. Scott played high-stakes cash online and in Bobby’s Room and was one of first Super High Roller regs. Shaun has mostly stuck to playing tournaments $10k and lower, and while he occasionally dabbles at the highest stakes, including his impressive win in WSOP $100k PLO in 2025, Scott has played against top competition more often, and he gets my final vote.
Player Comp: Someone who put up gaudy stats, won some MVP awards, but was never really considered best in the world. Some haters might have argued he was not even close. They both love playing garbage hands preflop in PLO. Shaun Deeb is Russell Westbrook.
Someone who is such a natural they earned baseball and basketball scholarships in college and were drafted into the NFL. He chose baseball and ended up having a HOF career where he was a 12-time all-star, and still his career feels like a slight disappointment, because the value of being naturally good at every game is not rewarded as much as being a specialist. Someone who “wants noise” at the table. Scott Seiver is Dave Winfield.
Those are my HOF thoughts, let’s see who the committee decides to induct
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
A PIO ICM sim using ranges I created for POTD #300
A deepstacked PIO sim using these exact sizings for POTD #301
A PIO sim using custom preflop ranges and lots of sizings for POTD #302
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 #300, where I wrote about how to analyze a solver strategy when you have a hand the solver almost never has.
POTD #300 onemorething
When a hand is supposed to have a pure or almost pure strategy on an earlier street to the point where it’s supposed to be zero reach at the node we are looking at. I tend to be wary of looking at the outputs. The solver often suggests an aggressive line because you are never supposed to have that hand. Take any river node and add 0.01 combos of 72o to your range and I bet the solver will bluff with it. It’s a rare an unpredictable bluff so it should be very high EV because the other player’s strategy barely accounts for you having 72o. In this hand Ah3c is supposed to pure shove the flop and it’s also supposed to pure shove the river. However, I think in this hand it’s a good bluff because of the properties of the hand, not just because it’s a rare combo. In this hand Dejan is supposed to check-call the river with 5.4 combos total. K3s makes up 6% of his total river check-calling range. Blocking one of those combos is worth so much that to me the EV here comes from blocking a common check-call and not having a rare bluff combo that the other player can’t account for.
Media
I watched the fifth and final season of The Bear and I liked it. I think one of the scourges of this era of prestige TV is that shows tend to spend too much time focusing on the trauma the characters experienced before the main action of the show and not enough time focusing on the actual drama in the present day. [I agree and probably feel even more strongly about this. -ed] I think The Bear, at its best, is either a sort of competence or chaos porn. It’s thrilling to watch everything at the restaurant click into place or go haywire. It’s less thrilling to be reminded that these characters are all here because the restaurant is their real family and their biological families are damaged. The later seasons of The Bear delved too much into backstory and they were tedious. The fifth season of The Bear takes place almost entirely over one day, and it was my favourite season since season 2. This season was almost entirely The Bear in hangout sitcom/sports movie mode, and that is when I think the show is at its best. I liked it.
Run It Once posted part 1 of my 10 WSOP Main Event Lessons for free on YouTube. Check it out.
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