The PokerListings Daily 3-Bet is a Kenwood eXcelon, a fuzzy steering wheel and all kinds of time to belt out afternoon poker news hits on your daily commute.
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Today in the 3-Bet we find a fervor for online poker in Portugal, Bruno Mars nods to his card-playing days and Daniel Negreanu looks to rebound.
1) Portugal Loves Poker
Here's an interesting statistic to mull over about the overall health of the game internationally: The #2 online poker site in the world in terms of traffic right now is Pokerstars.pt.
Maybe this guy on the left helped.
That's right. The ring-fenced, two-week-old localized PokerStars site exclusive to Portuguese players is the second-busiest in the world.
As of Tuesday it had the second-highest 24-hour peak in the industry (4,020 players, according to PokerScout.com) and was tied for second for seven-day average.
The only site with more players on a daily, hourly and weekly basis is the global PokerStars site itself.
That's pretty interesting. Perhaps having one of the biggest football stars on the planet endorsing their product has been a factor.
Whether that's sustainable or not, we'll see. And it is currently the only online poker site to play on in Portugal.
But 2,940 cash-game players is solid. And if that ever gets combined with other ring-fenced sites like France, Spain and Italy it'll be an intriguing new online poker power network.
Check the latest industry numbers on PokerScout.
2) Bruno Mars Played Some Cards
While it's a stretch to say multi-national pop sensation Bruno Mars was ever a poker "grinder," it turns out he did play some cards on the regular in Los Angeles before his career really took off.
Los Angeles amirite?
How do we know this? Thanks to the hard-digging denizens of the twoplustwo poker forums who found a mention of it during a segment of Carpool Karaoke on The Late Late Show with James Corden.
We didn't even know that was thing in the world but it is and they talk about stuff in between signing songs while they drive around LA.
According to a post from frequent LA reg and commentator Bart Hanson, he likely didn't "make a living" at it though:
"I played with him a handful of times in 2009 at Commerce $5-$10. He was the type of guy that you would "rush" to get a table change for. I also remember him usually losing a single $500 bullet and leaving. There was no way he was playing for profit."
Check the clip below (the mention of cards is around 12:55):
3) Daniel Negreanu Looks for Rebound Year
Here's another one for the "Who Knew?" file: Did you know that in 2016 Daniel Negreanu had his worst year (as far as total $ earned) on the live poker circuit since 2000?
Safe to say he was a distraction.
A bunch of extenuating circumstances led into it, of course, from the US election to the, uh, well, US election. But we take for granted DNegs will pile up some very big results every year and it turned out 2016 had a void of them.
His total live tournament haul this year? According to the Hendon Mob looks to be around $300k, which is definitely on the low side for the #1 all-time money leader in poker.
What does that mean for 2017? Listen to his new podcast below where he talks about what happened along with his recent trips to Florida, Norway and the Isle of Man for some extensive meetings at PokerStars.
He also hints at some of the major changes expected on PStars in 2017 and a few potential 'game-changing' new formats on the horizon.
