ShareGreg Merson has been talking with Doug Polk about cheating and shot clocks on the latter’s recent podcast. The pair chatted for almost two hours about the latest cheating scandal and various other topics, with many interesting viewpoints.
Ali Imsirovic Under Scrutiny
The first topic at hand was the recent incident concerning the behaviour of Ali Imsirovic. Probably the most talked about player in high-stakes circles today, Imsirovic is likely going to soon under pressure to explain himself with all of these accusations flying around.Merson says that he doesn’t normally want to get involved in such an awkward spot like this, but says that Imsirovic is such a hot talent that if all of the allegations are true then it’s really unnecessary.
He tells how the Bosnian-American actually picked up the game from his friend Evan Jarvis, better known as Gripsed. Polks adds that Imsirovic was actually one of the first members of Upswing Poker, buying up the courses as they were produced.
The conversation then moved on to a little-known story about Polk playing Imsirovic at $100/$200 while he was preparing for his grudge match against Daniel Negreanu. Polk said he hasn’t spoken about this publicly but it soon becomes clear that there were whispers in the background about possible cheating then too.
Polk doesn’t seem too sure, though, because he is able to recall many instances of poorly played hands that were clear mistakes as confirmed by the solver. But was this just a ruse to keep the action coming? Who knows.
Poker black-list can't come soon enough.
— Alex Foxen (@WAFoxen) April 18, 2022
Ali is banned from GG for Multi-accounting and RTA. I have witnessed numerous chip dumps to horses, and many suspicious changes in play from people known to be his horses when deep in online MTTs.
The most recent story is that of Imsirovic supposedly rubbernecking at Paul Phua’s holecards and being able to make a totally non-standard deviation from GTO by three-betting a monotone flop once he knew that the ace of that suit was out of play.
Whatever the truth is, it’s definitely not a great look for Ali Imsirovic.
Ali opens the CO with Ah9c. Then quite visibly looks down at Paul Phua's hole cards, Ad5. The actual footage makes it even more clear than this screen shot. Paul folds and Addamo defends the BB. Ali cbets and gets raised on 642ddd, sticks in a 3bet and wins the hand. pic.twitter.com/aIhQw4Hqv4
— Alex Foxen (@WAFoxen) April 18, 2022
Shots Clocks - A Good Thing?
Doug Polk makes a great point when he says that some players sacrifice EV in the name of game quality. Poker is a strategy game where “players are incentivised to take as much time as they can to increase their own win rate at the expense of the people at the table.” The players that tank then absorb the missing EV.The shot clock used at the recent Patrik Antonius Poker Challenge seems to be the best way to incentivise players not to burn time unnecessarily. From 10 seconds preflop to increasingly more, depending on the action ahead.
The interview is a great watch with many more interesting parts. Check it out above.
