So long and thanks for all the fish

Bravo. The good feelings of nostalgia are strong within me.

Arya is like the one guy I kind of forgot about. We were as thick as thieves playing .5/1 or 1/2. That 10/20 hand is so legendary. He decided to focus on I believe Law at a very good university and when I left facebook the relationship disappeared.

FYI there are talks about closing LP down. It's not the same LP it was back in '05 - '08. One reason not to close it down is because every now and again someone like you stops by and people get good feelings.

i still keep in touch with mipwnya ill send him this thread, get stronger ket and heal

I've also been hit with nostalgia from watching some old High Stakes Poker episodes recently. I also went to Vegas for the first time last year and played at a few different casinos after being inactive since 2010 and it was really fun. I think I would have enjoyed poker for longer if it was a possibility to play live games where I live.

The only relevant story I have to add is when I went to a strip club with Fayth and some other StarCraft players when we started being successful at poker, and he offered me several hundreds of dollars if I took some lap dances from a fat chick and I declined. He just kept raising the amount he'd give to me and I kept declining. I also played credit card roulette for the first time when we had a LP dinner at the PCA in 2009 and the finals were me against Fayth with RainKhan holding the cards and I chose and Fayth ended up losing and tilting for a second but he took it pretty well, it was a really expensive meal lol we were like 8 or 9 at the table.

You were always a really helpful and solid Ket, hope you're doing well.

Always bring a RNG versus the RPS sharks.

"longple – epic grinder, one of the guys that was becoming the new generation of beast just as I was quitting the game, had a great dinner with him in London and was very happy to see him having deserved success at the time for his hard work."

I was longple's padawan. I seem like a third-generation LP'er in the context of this post. The force was strong with that guy. He taught me new things that I would later confirm to be optimal by the solver. I believe Longple was on his way to become one of the best NL players in the world, but he never made it to the nosebleeds for some reason. The swedes crushed at poker during this time...Wilhasha, and Isildur1 were both at the top. They were the last group of top players that made people believe that sheer intuition was capable of making you number 1.

Longple still made what is probably the most insane successful bluff i've ever seen, which worked. (against tuffshark). He called with a pocket pair twice then bluffed by repping quads or some shit. He posted it on LP and everyone thought Longple was a lunatic that got lucky, (except for me). Perhaps someone can find it in the HH section. Edit: I found it! https://www.liquidpoker.net/h/936362. Wow, hand seems actually very normal by today's standards. Crazy at the time though.

Out of that list, I've only met Byrnesam, who used to crash at my place a lot after we went drinking. Very funny guy. When Byrnesam is drunk, he often walks backwards, then fowards, then sideways. I had to direct him with nudges to make him walk up the hill to my place once. Lmao.

I have to apologize to Raszi. Byrnsesam once logged onto my LP account and insulted him a lot on this forum. I didn't want to do that as I barely knew who Raszi was.

I remember watching you play in the early days and making the incredibly funny joke to myself: "no set, no bet, Ket". At the time I though everyone should be a LAGtarded spew monkey.
I've got a stylish party house with multiple computers setup for LAN parties in Christchurch New Zealand if you are ever in the neighborhood!

I wish I could read and see these forbidden stories.

LOL @ throwing a water baloon at Raszi's face while he is raging.

Good stuff Ket, your timing and ability to quickly pivot in life was flawless, to start in poker, to switch to PLO and leave for a career in finance (I think you wanted the pursue law at the time).

somethings money cant buy true friendship rikd you are a lucky guy my man

Hey man,

Thanks for the shoutout, yeah I remember getting clapped at WCG on some weird island map vs you after you practised some frozenarbiter build LOL, that was a very interesting trip though and I'm glad I had the chance to meet u back then pre-poker / TL days. I do wish that we had met again since then, but I was never a giga high roller etc and mostly played online with some live in UK/abroad. I played for fun & freedom. However, I lost total interest in poker quite a while ago and very rarely I still play the odd hand or two for fun. I think of you as one of the most respectable and intelligent people I ever met and also appreciate you for keeping a proportionate fun loving approach to life. Congrats on your family and daughter also growing up fast! That's fantastic.

I'm doing something somewhat similar to yourself atm, although I'm not working for a major firm. Basically I'm a private investor focusing largely on stocks with hidden value and momentum. I have owned part of a few businesses which were amazingly undervalued only to see them get sold by the owners for a premium. Not a bad result, but not exactly what I wanted. Currently I'm mostly interested in materials, mining, chemical and holding companies. I like reading a lot and thinking about how they work.

Always happy to meet up with you sometime again in the future, I will definitely hit you up if I'm in London. And if u want to chat more or do a call sometime we can, I'm not on any social media atm except Discord (if that counts) but just DM me whatever method u use to chat nowadays.

Love the write up, will never forget all the legends mentioned. PS, I though Straate had passed away in Amsterdam or am I confusing him with another LPer?

BTW, I recently bought a product called a yubikey, basically it's a hardware 2 factor authenticator and you can also use it for one time passwords, NFCs, static passwords and a few other similar methods. It allows 2 methods per key. Great way to protect various logins and you can buy multiple keys and connect them to the same services as a backup incase you lose your main key. I love this method and think you would be interested in it if you're not already

Catch u again soon
<3

What a sweet post <3 Also makes me feel incredibly old and nostalgic lol
Love you Kettle, will reach out next time I'm in London

Hope it's just for nostalgias sake you wrote this Kettle! Hope you and the fam are good!

On June 14 2022 23:15 RiKD wrote: Bravo. The good feelings of nostalgia are strong within me. Arya is like the one guy I kind of forgot about. We were as thick as thieves playing .5/1 or 1/2. That 10/20 hand is so legendary. He decided to focus on I believe Law at a very good university and when I left facebook the relationship disappeared. FYI there are talks about closing LP down. It's not the same LP it was back in '05 - '08. One reason not to close it down is because every now and again someone like you stops by and people get good feelings.

Ah nice good for him.. Ha thanks for kind words, where is this talk of LP closedown though? I guess all the more reason we find other ways to stay in touch.. I guess if it happens it just gets merged into TL.net somehow with a little poker section. Another super impressive thing to witness from sidelines has been how Naz/TL successfully rode the wave of eSports becoming mainstream. Always the man

On June 15 2022 00:22 lostaccount wrote: Cheers thanks ket for helping with transfer in vegas and charging me below market vigs

Welcome!! Don't remember this lol. Looks like you're about 40% of the posting volume keeping this site going nowadays lol, hope all well

On June 15 2022 00:55 Loco wrote: I've also been hit with nostalgia from watching some old High Stakes Poker episodes recently. I also went to Vegas for the first time last year and played at a few different casinos after being inactive since 2010 and it was really fun. I think I would have enjoyed poker for longer if it was a possibility to play live games where I live. The only relevant story I have to add is when I went to a strip club with Fayth and some other StarCraft players when we started being successful at poker, and he offered me several hundreds of dollars if I took some lap dances from a fat chick and I declined. He just kept raising the amount he'd give to me and I kept declining. I also played credit card roulette for the first time when we had a LP dinner at the PCA in 2009 and the finals were me against Fayth with RainKhan holding the cards and I chose and Fayth ended up losing and tilting for a second but he took it pretty well, it was a really expensive meal lol we were like 8 or 9 at the table. You were always a really helpful and solid Ket, hope you're doing well.

Yo really appreciate ur kind words and LOLOL at that story. Fayth def a guy I'm forgetting the first time around. Another guy I remember put in massive grind back in the day and came up pretty quickly when he put the work in. what you up to nowadays Loco?

On June 15 2022 01:22 Stroggoz wrote: "longple – epic grinder, one of the guys that was becoming the new generation of beast just as I was quitting the game, had a great dinner with him in London and was very happy to see him having deserved success at the time for his hard work." I was longple's padawan. I seem like a third-generation LP'er in the context of this post. The force was strong with that guy. He taught me new things that I would later confirm to be optimal by the solver. I believe Longple was on his way to become one of the best NL players in the world, but he never made it to the nosebleeds for some reason. The swedes crushed at poker during this time...Wilhasha, and Isildur1 were both at the top. They were the last group of top players that made people believe that sheer intuition was capable of making you number 1. Longple still made what is probably the most insane successful bluff i've ever seen, which worked. (against tuffshark). He called with a pocket pair twice then bluffed by repping quads or some shit. He posted it on LP and everyone thought Longple was a lunatic that got lucky, (except for me). Perhaps someone can find it in the HH section. Edit: I found it! https://www.liquidpoker.net/h/936362. Wow, hand seems actually very normal by today's standards. Crazy at the time though. Out of that list, I've only met Byrnesam, who used to crash at my place a lot after we went drinking. Very funny guy. When Byrnesam is drunk, he often walks backwards, then fowards, then sideways. I had to direct him with nudges to make him walk up the hill to my place once. Lmao. I have to apologize to Raszi. Byrnsesam once logged onto my LP account and insulted him a lot on this forum. I didn't want to do that as I barely knew who Raszi was.

LOL Byrnesam legend. Really enjoyed reading the Longple story, and that hand link is amazing especially the LPer chat in the comments. I guess that in a nutshell captures is the era of poker moving forward towards more solid theoretical play away from my day's ridiculous street poker (standard open size was 4x, 3b to 14-16bb with unreasonable frequencies, cb 20bb lol), and with hindsight longple was clearly in front of it.
Had an awesome couple 'old times sake' HU battles with longple long after I'd quit NLHE and was a plo player. Think I fared okay in the first one, must have ran good, but def got torn a new one in the second one.
Stroggoz - think I vaguely remember lurking the site years after I stopped posting and saw u were doing well in poker's solver era? Great to see. Have you posted your own poker story somewhere

On June 15 2022 02:14 Baalim wrote: I wish I could read and see these forbidden stories. LOL @ throwing a water baloon at Raszi's face while he is raging. Good stuff Ket, your timing and ability to quickly pivot in life was flawless, to start in poker, to switch to PLO and leave for a career in finance (I think you wanted the pursue law at the time).

Ha thanks mate. Not really sure what happened with the rate of decline in quality of games after I left and whether it was ahead or below my expectations at the time or not but any perceived good timing was probs mainly luck on my part. Right place right time in golden days, and then quit when I did because I didn't wanna leave it too late to get into something else.

On June 15 2022 04:42 ggplz wrote: Hey man, Thanks for the shoutout, yeah I remember getting clapped at WCG on some weird island map vs you after you practised some frozenarbiter build LOL, that was a very interesting trip though and I'm glad I had the chance to meet u back then pre-poker / TL days. I do wish that we had met again since then, but I was never a giga high roller etc and mostly played online with some live in UK/abroad. I played for fun & freedom. However, I lost total interest in poker quite a while ago and very rarely I still play the odd hand or two for fun. I think of you as one of the most respectable and intelligent people I ever met and also appreciate you for keeping a proportionate fun loving approach to life. Congrats on your family and daughter also growing up fast! That's fantastic. I'm doing something somewhat similar to yourself atm, although I'm not working for a major firm. Basically I'm a private investor focusing largely on stocks with hidden value and momentum. I have owned part of a few businesses which were amazingly undervalued only to see them get sold by the owners for a premium. Not a bad result, but not exactly what I wanted. Currently I'm mostly interested in materials, mining, chemical and holding companies. I like reading a lot and thinking about how they work. Always happy to meet up with you sometime again in the future, I will definitely hit you up if I'm in London. And if u want to chat more or do a call sometime we can, I'm not on any social media atm except Discord (if that counts) but just DM me whatever method u use to chat nowadays. Love the write up, will never forget all the legends mentioned. PS, I though Straate had passed away in Amsterdam or am I confusing him with another LPer? BTW, I recently bought a product called a yubikey, basically it's a hardware 2 factor authenticator and you can also use it for one time passwords, NFCs, static passwords and a few other similar methods. It allows 2 methods per key. Great way to protect various logins and you can buy multiple keys and connect them to the same services as a backup incase you lose your main key. I love this method and think you would be interested in it if you're not already Catch u again soon <3

Ah great to hear from you. I'll pm you my mobile, perhaps good to keep in touch via whatsapp chat. Great to hear ur into the stocks etc.
LOL frozenarbiter build - I got him to teach me it personally in my WCG prep. I asked and he was initially hesitant to help because UK only sends one person, and he was more loyal as a closer friend to Midian at the time who's "competing" for the same slot. I told him "lol mate don't worry, I am not going to beat midian if I learn a build from you". He went to Jamie to ask permission to teach me the builds. Jamie said "lol sure" ofcourse.

Frozenarbiter - definitely another guy I forgot to mention initially. Had the pleasure to meet him when I spent a summer in Seoul. There's a story from that night out which _absolutely_ can't be repeated publically for his sake

On June 15 2022 01:58 Silver_nz wrote: I remember watching you play in the early days and making the incredibly funny joke to myself: "no set, no bet, Ket". At the time I though everyone should be a LAGtarded spew monkey. I've got a stylish party house with multiple computers setup for LAN parties in Christchurch New Zealand if you are ever in the neighborhood!

hahah good one... man I thought I spewed plenty https://www.liquidpoker.net/h/222210

On June 15 2022 08:11 MiPwnYa wrote: What a sweet post <3 Also makes me feel incredibly old and nostalgic lol Love you Kettle, will reach out next time I'm in London

<3 Where are you nowadays??

On June 15 2022 08:54 Nuros wrote: Hope it's just for nostalgias sake you wrote this Kettle! Hope you and the fam are good!

Wtf, Tom!! I 100% forgot you or Luke were ever on LP (VdP4lyfe!!!!). Did totally have you and Luke in mind when making this post but left a bunch of people out that weren't regular LPers because wrong audience etc. Amazing surprise to see u pop up here, what you up to nowadays mate?? Still keep in touch with Luke? Haha I'm not dying or something don't worry.

On June 15 2022 04:42 ggplz wrote: Hey man, Thanks for the shoutout, yeah I remember getting clapped at WCG on some weird island map vs you after you practised some frozenarbiter build LOL, that was a very interesting trip though and I'm glad I had the chance to meet u back then pre-poker / TL days. I do wish that we had met again since then, but I was never a giga high roller etc and mostly played online with some live in UK/abroad. I played for fun & freedom. However, I lost total interest in poker quite a while ago and very rarely I still play the odd hand or two for fun. I think of you as one of the most respectable and intelligent people I ever met and also appreciate you for keeping a proportionate fun loving approach to life. Congrats on your family and daughter also growing up fast! That's fantastic. I'm doing something somewhat similar to yourself atm, although I'm not working for a major firm. Basically I'm a private investor focusing largely on stocks with hidden value and momentum. I have owned part of a few businesses which were amazingly undervalued only to see them get sold by the owners for a premium. Not a bad result, but not exactly what I wanted. Currently I'm mostly interested in materials, mining, chemical and holding companies. I like reading a lot and thinking about how they work. Always happy to meet up with you sometime again in the future, I will definitely hit you up if I'm in London. And if u want to chat more or do a call sometime we can, I'm not on any social media atm except Discord (if that counts) but just DM me whatever method u use to chat nowadays. Love the write up, will never forget all the legends mentioned. PS, I though Straate had passed away in Amsterdam or am I confusing him with another LPer? BTW, I recently bought a product called a yubikey, basically it's a hardware 2 factor authenticator and you can also use it for one time passwords, NFCs, static passwords and a few other similar methods. It allows 2 methods per key. Great way to protect various logins and you can buy multiple keys and connect them to the same services as a backup incase you lose your main key. I love this method and think you would be interested in it if you're not already Catch u again soon <3

The guy who passed away you're thinking of I believe to be ToT)Psier(. Johannes Strassmann I think his real name was. Good to see some old UK BW guys still kicking around here

^ yeah exactly, forgot to mention. Sad story, but not straate who as far as I know is still very much doing fine!