The PokerListings Daily 3-Bet is a beautiful long pass at midfield, a perfect cross into the penalty area and an acrobatic bicycle kick right into the back of the afternoon poker news goal.
Got a tip for a future 3-Bet? Drop a note in the comments and we'll gladly take a look.
Today in the 3-Bet we find Phil Ivey running hustles on Team Ivey pros Griffin Benger and Mike Leah, Isaac Haxton's Dad puts a new spin on the poker memoir and the real-life Runner Runner story of Australian Daniel Tzvetkoff gets the big-screen treatment.
1) Ivey Hustles Benger and Leah
You don't get to be the best poker player in the world by not being able to recognize where your edges are (pun intended), right?
The increasingly gregarious and accessible Phil Ivey popped up in a new sitdown with All In Magazine posted today, which was interesting but also reminded us of his running #IveyLife series on his own poker training site, Ivey Poker.
Much to our delight we then found a couple of new(ish) episodes of #IveyLife where Ivey hustles members of his own pro team in prop bets.
Note to viewers: Griffin Benger's nipples have been blurred out for your protection. The rest of his shirtless upper body you'll have to reconcile yourself.
2) Isaac Haxton's Dad Writes Poker Memoir
PokerStars Team Online pro Isaac Haxton's dad Brooks, a writing teacher at Syracuse University, has written a new poker memoir. Not about himself, though. About his extraordinary son.
Titled Fading Hearts on the River: A Life in High-Stakes Poker, the book doesn't come out until next month but an excerpt has already appeared in the New York Times. At first read it looks like it's both eloquently written and filled with amazing insight into how a poker prodigy comes to be:
"A year ago, I found out that my son, Isaac, won $300,000 playing online poker the previous day. His mother, Francie, was pleased to hear about this on her way out the door for work. The next day, I learned that he won another $62,000.
"A few weeks later, I discovered that Isaac had lost $800,000, probably the largest loss for anyone in the world that day, and his losses for several weeks looked similarly catastrophic. For Isaac, these results fall squarely within the kind of variance he expects. He had been playing poker online for 10 years and ... his losing streak was up $1.6 million for that year alone.
"Francie and I like to avoid risk as much as we can, and Isaac’s detachment from our sense of money makes us queasy. But 28 years ago, three days after he was born, we risked as much as we could imagine."
We won't spoil the first twist for you; go check out the full piece and be sure to buy the book when it comes out.
3) Tzvetkoff Story Optioned for Big Screen
An inspired-by-real-life film of Intabill founder/mega-millionaire-turned-FBI-informant Daniel Tzvetkoff's crazy rise to fortune and fall to witness protection? Might stand a better chance.
The incredible story of 25-year-old Tzvetkoff's brief reign as the king of online payment processing resurfaced in the Daily Mail UK today thanks to an upcoming book about it by James Leighton calld Alligator Blood.
An interesting note tossed in among the detail? The book's film rights have been bought by Robert Luketic, the director and writer behind Hollywood hits 21 and Legally Blonde.
Given the amazing twists, turns and double crosses Leighton describes in his book it has all the makings of a real winner - even if the end result was(is) still Black Friday. Even more intriguing?
"According to Leighton 'rumours persist that Daniel Tzvektoff may have managed to hide away some of the money he earned as neither the Intabill liquidator, nor the Department of Justice have found any evidence of the alleged missing millions.’"
Read the full preview of Leighton's book at The Daily Mail.
