The Poker Grid

Jennifer invites data scientist, chess master and writer Nate Solon to the GRID. Nate talks about a hand from a private game early in his poker career. He found himself flopping bottom set on a dry board against a friend—but things got progressively worse: not only did he lose the pot, but he and his friend were accused of colluding. Nate and Jennifer look back at the unexpected hand in light of c...

Jennifer Shahade invites Wey “CRAIBaby” Xie to the GRID. A high stakes online player who has battled and won with the best players in the World, Wey Xie talks about a pivotal hand he played with Ace-Queen offsuit on PokerStars. 150 big blinds deep in 1K NL, The hijack opened to 2.7x and Wey Xie called in the big blind with the Ace of Hearts and the Queen of Clubs. The flop came 6d7h9h. After Wey X...

Jennifer Shahade joins David Lappin and Dara O’Kearney from the Chip Race to discuss a hand from the 3K Mystery Bounty event at EPT Barcelona. With bounties in play and the money bubble looming, Jennifer held Jack-Six suited, and got involved in a preflop confrontation with top Norweigian pro Preben Stokan and high roller Paul Newey.   The discussion moves on to common strategies and misconce...

Jennifer Shahade re-releases her 2019 episode with 3-time WSOP bracelet winner and star commentator Nick Schulman. Nick, consistently ahead of the curve, played a big pot with jack-four offsuit in a NYC underground cash game.  She also touches on the current scandals that have shaken the chess and poker worlds. For more on Jennifer’s thoughts,  check out her Financial Times article...

Matt Matros, three-time WSOP bracelet winner and three-time author enters the GRID to discuss a fascinating hand with ace-nine offsuit, also featured in his new book,  The Poker Brain: Improving Your Process Through Optimal and Exploitive Thinking. Matt opened the hijack, deep in the money of an online bracelet event, and was called by poker pro Darren Rabbi in the big blind. The flop was 852 rain...

Yosha Iglesias, a poker player, chess master and coach, enters the GRID to talk about a long-awaited hand to be clicked off the GRID: Ace-King offsuit. She throws us back to the boom days of poker in France, where she found herself as a chipleader in an MTT at her college bar. In  a dramatic three-bet pot with a crush, her talent for poker intersected with romance, giving us some unique...

In a bonus episode of the GRID, Jennifer brings in her friend, best-selling author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz to talk about his new book, “Don’t Trust Your Gut: Using Data To get What You Really Want in Life.”. Seth is also the author of “Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are” and an amateur poker player. He has familial ties to the professiona...

Angela Jordison enters the GRID, to discuss a sizzling hand she played against World Champion Greg “Fossilman” Raymer at the 2021 WSOP Senior’s Event. Angela raised in early position with ace-eight suited, and called a three-bet from Raymer on the button. When the flop came out beautifully, three-eight-ace with two clubs, Jordison check raised. They saw another eight on the turn, bringing in the c...

Poker coach, player, and renowned author on mindset and strategy Tommy Angelo enters the GRID to talk about a thrilling—and then not so thrilling—hand with ace-three suited. This hand throws back all the way to 1995, to a riverboat game on the Mississippi in Saint Louis, where Tommy found himself in a multi-way hand with ace-three of diamonds. The board ran out Queen of Spades, Four of Diamonds, a...

Jennifer welcomes her longtime friend to the GRID, professional poker player and commentator Katie Stone. Katie brings a hand she played at a heads up charity challenge hosted by   Solve For Why , a Vegas based poker training academy founded by Matt Berkey.  Katie had already won matches against Hearthstone streamer Hafu and poker pro Kitty Kuo when she faced her final four opponent: Poker De...

The multi-faceted Philly poker pro, Mike Shaw enters the GRID. The rock star, restaurant manager and mixed game proponent brings a hand from the very first live poker tournament he played, in 2004. He held King-Seven offsuit in a pivotal moment heads-up at the Binion’s Casino in Las Vegas. Though it wasn’t the World Series of Poker, it was the last year that the event was held there. While Mike di...

Jennifer records a special solo episode of the GRID, where she takes readers through the poker highlights of her new book,  Chess Queens: The True Story of a Chess Champion and the Greatest Female Players of All Time.  She also reads out loud segments on jealousy, sexualization and the popularity of games. In the original book that  Chess Queens  was based on,  Chess Bitch...

Jennifer welcomes legendary cash game pro Olivier Busquet to the GRID. He’s a two-time European Poker Tour champion, a WPT Champion, and has over nine million dollars in live earnings. Most known for his l ongevity in online cash and heads-up games, Olivier brings a throwback hand to the GRID. He had King-Jack suited in a Poker After Dark Episode that was filmed over a decade ago in 2011, just bef...

Jennifer Shahade welcomes fellow PokerStars Ambassador Keith “Accidental Grenade” Becker to the GRID. Keith, who also goes by whoopsboom brings a hand from the PokerStars PA Winter Series, where he captured an event win in the final stretch. In his GRID moment, Keith had king-ten offsuit, with no heart. In an iconic spot about 45 big blinds deep, Keith three bet a button open from the small blind....

This bonus episode of the GRID offers a fascinating discussion between Jen Shahade and quant sports trader & US Chess expert Ella Papanek. A recent graduate of Harvard University, Ella works at the  Susquehana International Group (SIG),  a global quantitative trading firm in the Philly area. Her interests span from chess to poker to sports, and of course- statistics, her major a...

Jennifer welcomes Amanda Botfeld, author of “ A Girls Guide to Poker ” to the GRID. Amanda discusses a hand from the tag team event at the World Series of Poker, where she paired up with the man who taught her poker 15 years earlier: her dad. The heart-warming duo came in third place, cashing for 50K total. Amanda emphasized the wholesome elements of poker in a viral tweet from one of their...

In a bonus holiday episode of the GRID, Jennifer introduces listeners to International Master Rusudan Goletiani. Goletiani is a three-time World Youth Champion, a two-time Olympic medalist and a former US Women’s Champion- she took Jennifer’s title in 2005.    In 1992, Rusa fled her region of Georgia, Abkhazia, due to war. She explains the dramatic story to Jennifer in the podcast, revea...

Jennifer welcomes a very special guest to the GRID, a prolific podcast host who captures the voice of a peripatetic cash game pro: DGAF. DGAF, as he calls himself, is the creator of  epic “Sessions” podcast ,   with over 700 episodes, and the  founder of Poker Rags. DGAF brings the hand that hooked him on No Limit Hold Em almost 20 years ago, in 2003, right after Chris Moneymaker sparked the poker...

The GRID is back just in time for the Main Event bubble, and an appropriately timed interview with Dara O’Kearney, professional poker player and three-time author, most recently of  Endgame Poker Strategy: The ICM Book.  Dara tells Jennifer about a hand from a decade ago at a tournament in Dublin which was modeled after the WSOP Main. The villain was David Lappin, who is now Dara’s co-...

Jennifer Shahade welcomes Qiyu “Nemo” Zhou to the GRID. Nemo is a former World Youth Chess Champion, a streamer at   twitch.tv/akanemsko  and a professional e-sports player at Counter Logic Gaming. Since turning 21 in January, she has been sprinkling more and more poker into her main menu of chess and league of legends.  She even won a poker tournament  soon after this pod was...

The GRID welcomes best-selling author, mathematician and professor Jordan Ellenberg, author of the new book,  Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy and Everything Else . He is also the best-selling author of  How Not to Be Wrong , a Math Olympian and a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Though Jordan is not a serious poke...

In a special bonus episode of The Grid, we welcome one of our most extraordinary guests ever: Holocaust Survivor, author and 1956 French Women’s Chess champion, Isabelle Choko.  Born on September 18, 1928 in Lodz, Poland, Isabelle Choko was two weeks away from her 11 th  birthday when Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Isabelle and her loving parents were among 160,000 sen...

Jennifer brings longtime friend, a master of many games, Jonathan Corbblah on to the GRID. He talks about a dramatic hand with nine-five suited in a private game at the Hamptons, where his new opponent confused him to the very last moments of the hand.  Jonathan speaks about how his psychological approach helps him in every game, from crushing private poker games to beating grandmasters in blitz t...

Jennifer welcomes poker player, survivor all star and tech executive Shirin Oskooi to the GRID.   Shirin brings us five-six suited, a combo she loves both for its chameleon-like preflop qualities, and a pivotal hand she played at the Wynn when she was new to poker. She held 56 of diamonds in the big blind and defended a lojack raise, to flop a flush with 78Tddd. As the hand continued, Shirin reali...

CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v62), quality = 82 Bonus Episode: Dr. Chanda Prescod Weinstein on times tables and Wu-Chess. In a special bonus episode of the GRID, we welcome Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, theoretical physicist and author of the new paradigm shifting book ,  The Disordered Comsos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime & Dreams Deferred . This episode originally appe...