Advertise on podcast: Dead Money w/ Dan Arfin

In the midst of what has been a recent brutal run, I decide to close out year 6 since my return to poker with a mere few hours of 1/3. I was met with one of the most vicious roller coasters of a session I've ever had in terms of big blinds. But that wasn't enough. Along the way, I had to listen to Forrest Gump level analysis of hands, and was even questioned by a spectator as to what I was doing with my phone...god oh mighty...

Played an impulsive session Monday afternoon when the Wynn 2/5 was surprisingly busy. These are the hand history highlights as the struggle continues. That doesn't necessarily mean I lost money...but my goodness...no matter how many years you've been playing, you really wonder sometimes just what the hell does it take to go a couple days, or god forbid even a couple HOURS without the deck completely violating you?

I'm really running out of steam here. I wanna be out there, but f**k me if I'm simply not feeling like I've just had enough. This has happened before. Who knows if I will have to sit out for a long time or not. I don't want to. But I can barely even get out of the house right now. So I hit on that for a bit, and jump around to a few old stories along with attending a GA meeting...but not for a traditional reason...

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It's not 9/11 anymore, but I share a little bit about what it was like for me, when I was 16. Then I think some more about how good it is to be a poker player since you can take hours off whenever you want. And then we hit some hand histories from a late Saturday afternoon into the evening. Was a short session with a lot of uncomfortable spots, but quite a bit of faith was restored as well. You see a ton of nitty regs these days in Las Vegas. Some are better than others, but altogether, these guys cannot play. So apart from the times it's all setup on a tee for them, there's a lot of advantages to be gained over them.

Been running bad for what feels like a hell of a lot longer than it's actually been. And my play has been not helping one bit in far too many spots. I'm getting depressed and burnt out again. And go figure that the saddest sappiest sounding episode I've ever record comes when I finally hit the century mark milestone. I'm searching for a solution. I can't stand the f*****g DB PLO bomb pots they run every 30 minutes now at every goddam room now except the Wynn. The games have been torturously boring so I've been thinking about switching to a night schedule. But that seems a longshot because I never stick to a schedule to begin with, since who the hell wants to do that? And an overnight schedule is the hardest one to keep on top of it. So I'm tilted, bored, aggravated, and worst of all sick with my play that appears to be suffering from all of this. I'm feeling damned if I do and damned if I don't. When I'm not playing I get FOMO. And when I show up I want to shoot myself. And I've barely even lost anything! That's the sickest part. That tells you just how worn out poker has left me feeling again. And it's been on and off for a while now. This game is very demanding and I think every 4-6 years or so I just start to lose interest completely from wear and tear. And especially when you consider how things went the final 6 months of last year. OMFG. That was the type run that alters both a person's mindset AND what type of role they want poker to play in their life. The type of run that heavily influences their entire career trajectory. But things change constantly and things change fast. So who knows? Maybe one or two big winning days happen and I feel good as new again. But that could also be a long way off. And even if does happen, it may only provide temporarily relief before I want to jump in front of a train again a week later. But the good news is I can take as long as I need to sort this out. Still, I always feel productive about a day when I play poker no matter how I feel before, during, or after the session. And I suppose that's the most important thing of all...maybe.

I've been trying to get myself back from a long break post WSOP, except getting hours in are proving to be quite difficult because the games are either terrible or I have been getting murdered left and right in the sickest ways when they're great. And on top of it, I also seem to be f*****g up at a way higher frequency than I can ever remember. So I am just the nut low of all nut lows every which way. I either get it wrong in a million small medium spots, or when THEY get it DEAD WRONG in just about EVERY big spot like they've been doing for decades, they win. So like I say, I just might be the worst. But you know something, it's actually quite liberating when you simply accept that because now at least you can't go any lower and all expectations of yourself because you already know you're a completely utterly helpless and useless piece of shit.

Firstly, go check out my interview on The Poker Zoo Persuadeo Dean Martin podcast. I spoke with Chris Murray for close to an hour and had a blast talking to him. He is a great host. Secondly, I'm back in at the Wynn 2/5 and picking up right where I left off from my most recent session which was running like total dogshit. I also can't tell if I'm playing pretty good or if I am playing absolutely horrible these days. Mistakes happen just about every session. That of course is fine. But I'm feeling like whatever I do is wrong. When I bet big I should bet small. When I bet small I should bet big. When I'm passive I should be aggressive. When I'm aggressive I should be passive. There's variance built in just to the decisions you make, but I don't know...I feel like something is wrong with me. Either way, here are the hand history highlights from the last couple of sessions.

Still on something of a rehab assignment, I played another session of 1/3. Usually I play only an hour or two of it at the most. This time I went for close to 4 and a half hours split between two casinos, and actually came across some pretty tough spots. But the highlight of it all was the rage I felt towards a table that felt like a slow moving Internet game.

I'd never been interviewed before on another poker podcast for any reason. But I have been now. Chris Murray brought me on, and that show will be published over the next few days. I'll certainly make an announcement about it in my next episode, but keep an eye out for it in the meantime. Also, as I've been struggling to recover my poker mojo, I finally got off my ass and played a few spurts of 1/3. As usual there's at least one person who can never figure out what the hell is going on, including when it's their turn to play poker.

I don't have a lot to talk about this week since I still refuse to play. So I just make fun of nits for a little while, then realize the importance of variance, and also dig up some old hand histories from the archives to discuss what can happen when you actually pay attention to the hands people show and the things they say.

In one of wildest final hands in WSOP Main Event history, I go over a little bit about the action that put Lucas Jumalon into the poker history books, plus some analysis of hands I played recently. Lately, I haven't really been feeling the poker itch. I've been wanting to feel the itch, but you don't scratch parts of your body unless they're itching. If you do, you're weird. Or at least the act of doing that is weird. I don't know if forcing yourself to play poker when you don't really want to is AS weird, but either way, it's not something you want to be doing. So I've been agitated at the table more easily, although I've been keeping it pretty well internalized for a change. Still though, when you're running bad as I mostly have been the last couple of weeks worth of play, it makes no difference how strong your desire to play is. You're going to be some level of irritated.

Long time friend and veteran poker pro Mike Zulker returns to the Dead Money studios for his third visit. Here we begin with discussing some of the highlights from his 2026 WSOP. But Mike has come a long way in his career., mostly through cash games. Through many ups and downs, he now finds himself as one of the co-game runners for the Must Be Nice (MBN) high limit game at the Aria. Throughout this show, Mike goes over some tough hand histories, and talks about the importance of how everyone needs to be treated at a game of this magnitude. We also touch on what to watch out for when staking other players, and things to not get caught up in when playing with friends.

A recent subscriber asked that I go over my poker career and what happened en route to each of the stakes I played. Seeing as I don't exactly get overrun with questions and/or comments, I devoted most of this episode to answering this question. But before I get into that, I left Las Vegas for a few days as the 2026 WSOP was winding down, and I dropped in for a brief 2/5 session at the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood, Florida. I enjoyed the igloo oops I mean poker room. Even if it was, hands down, the most frigid poker room I've ever been in. Brutal.

So the 2026 WSOP is finally winding down. You know that when you show up on a Saturday and it takes hours just to get a third 2/5 game going. It was a rather brutal day--the kind that takes something from you that's a hell of a lot more valuable than money has ever been.