1. Russ Hamilton Blackjack
2. Poker Scandal

Prahlad Friedman is a man apart from the poker industry. While many young players have trodden the familiar path of gaining reputations based on their online play, many legends of the game cut their teeth at the live felt. Friedman falls between those two stalls.

The man known as Pragress spoke with us during the 2019 World Series of Poker on his incredible rise and fall, along with What he’d really say to Russ Hamilton if he met him today.

• Poker Shrink said, “And for the record, expressing an opinion that the interview added nothing to the discussion is not an endorsement of Russ Hamilton” Poker Shrink expressed my thoughts better than I did. I should have simply said, “That video added.nothing. to the discussion.” DanM says: February 6th, 2009 at 11:15am.
• Russ Hamilton, winner of the 1994 WSOP, named as a prime player in the Ultimate Bet online cheating scandal, refuses to apologize to the online poker community.

Watch the Prahlad Friedman Poker Central Podcast episode on PokerGO right now.

FROM HOOP DREAMS TO POKER

While Friedman has been incredibly successful in poker, he gave up on his dream of being in the NBA, growing up being a fine basketball player.

“I was very competitive, so wanted to be best the world at poker,” says Friedman, referencing how he began his discovery of the game from his father. “It all started with my Dad winning a lowball tournament. It was exciting.”

Russ Hamilton has won 1 bracelets and 0 rings for total earnings of $1,261,940. See all events where they placed in-the-money. Russ Hamilton's Results, Stats, Bio, Gallery & Pictures. Date Country Place Prize; 04-Jan-2006: Bahamas $ 7,800 WPT - Main Event - No Limit Hold'em PokerStars Caribbean Adventure - PCA.

Friedman realized that it wasn’t just a game played for fun or bragging rights between older men. He quickly signed up online, and developed a fearsome reputation, mixing it up and pioneering some of the plays defined as optimal by the solvers in use today. Bridging the generation gap with his father’s poker pursuit, Friedman became a big name in the game.

TAKING ON ALL COMERS

“I miss waking up in my underwear, taking on all comers,” states Friedman when asked about those formative years.

“Whether it was Phil Ivey, Doyle Brunson or ‘Durrr’ [Tom Dwan], there was a time where I would literally play anyone,” admits Friedman, “That’s how I got cheated for so much. There was some ego there, which was detrimental to me in the end. I did think I was the best in the world. I wanted to stay there.”

THE ULTIMATE BET SCANDAL

Russ Hamilton Blackjack

Friedman could not stay there, but it wasn’t down to his own play. The Ultimate Bet scandal saw players robbed of millions due to others being able to see hole cards. Friedman himself lost a fortune.

“I had done well for so long and taken swings; up a million, down a million. I figured it was a downswing. There were times when I started to get nervous something was happening, but [I was] picked me off for a couple million. It really hurt me bad.”

CHANGING HIS GAME

Friedman noticed his game changing, which was one of the worst things about the whole affair.

“When you’re being cheated, you change your game, I stopped over-betting, I became nitty. No bluff worked, [I was] being cheated. Getting cheated out of maybe $3 million maybe cost me something big.”

While he was winning, Friedman was ‘helping friends out and splashing money’, but then the black cloud descended on his game as he puts it. After the Ultimate Bet scandal surfaced, he would receive a call from a poker legend.

“When I found out I was getting a big refund, Phil Hellmuth called me in Aruba, I got $60,000 [as first payment] and he said, ‘You’re going to get a lot more than that back.”

THE FALL OUT HITS HARD

Hellmuth’s call precipitated a return to UB for Friedman, something he was criticized for by Daniel Negreanu at the time and now feels bad about. If he has regrets, however, it’s not just losing such a ‘tremendous’ amount of money, but that he was cheated again after he turned pro for the site to get a 9% yield.

“Now I wish I hadn’t done it. It’s embarrassing, but I lost most of my money playing on the site. I haven’t come face to face with Russ Hamilton. I don’t know what would happen. I’m sure I’d say, ‘f*** you’. He’s a bad element of the world. If online poker was regulated, he would be serving time right now.”

Despite his obvious frustration at the episode, Friedman didn’t go crazy. If anything, what has tilted him most over the years may come as something of a shock. It wasn’t even missing out on the biggest-ever WSOP Main Event prize in 2006 after coming so close (Friedman came 20th for $494,797).

“$12m for first and I had a shot! I never got crazy after the Main. I threw some [computer] mice at the screen, maybe punched a wall over online poker. If you have a friend watching you, you go more nuts, it’s psychology.”

CALLING A BLUFF, THE CADILLAC OF POKER FEELS

Despite Friedman now considering ‘2-7’ to be his best game, he can still make spectacular plays in NLHE and a recent hero call against Darren Elias with pocket fours gave viral broadcast to the phrase ‘It doesn’t snow often in Vegas’. Believing that he was being bluffed, or ‘snowed’, Friedman’s call went around the world.

“I just felt like I was in a cash game,” he says about the call, “I felt comfortable in the moment, talking and trying to see his reaction. John Hennigan’s done this to me so many times, he’s the master snow-catcher. It’s great to read anyone’s soul and make a non-conventional play.”

Friedman still retains a burning passion for poker, and still wants to be the best. With a one-year-old daughter and partner on his side, he is clear about how much the game means.

“Poker is emotional, you’ve got your whole life in it. You’re fighting for food, rent, family.”

Friedman will always fight the good fight, and it looks as though he’s here to stay.

You can listen to the entire Poker Central Podcast featuring the legendary Prahlad Friedman right here.

Looking to be entertained and learn along the way about your favorite players? Subscribe right now to PokerGO to watch the Poker Central Podcast and make sure that you never miss another minute of action such as Poker After Dark, the Super High Roller Bowl and much more. Follow Prahlad Friedman on Twitter.

While it has been a few years since news of the largest cheating scandal in poker history broke, the topic is still fresh in the minds of most poker aficionados. This is especially true of the contributors over at the TwoPlusTwo Forums, who rarely miss an opportunity to discuss the man behind the superuser accounts.

Russ Hamilton, the 1994 World Series of Poker Main Event winner, is the main culprit accused of cheating online players out of $20 million on UltimateBet and Absolute Poker and has long been public enemy number one in the poker world. Since the cheating scandal broke, Hamilton has refused to address the allegations and is rarely seen in the poker world. That all changed over the past couple of weeks when he was spotted playing at the Gulfstream Park Casino in Hallandale Beach, Florida.

On Wednesday January 19, 2011, a TwoPlusTwo member known as 'Slifdog' started a thread titled “Russ Hamilton verbally eviscerated, breaks down into an obscenity laced tirade” and reported the following.

Poker Scandal

“Last night my buddy Billy and I decide to take a break from our regular SoFl live casino and take a trip to gulfstream for a session. We finally get called for the 5/10/20NL (no buy-in cap) game and I get sat in the 10, Billy gets sat in the 8 seat . . . I give Billy a look and he is wondering what is wrong with me. Billy hasn't yet looked at this guy in the face, he is too busy contemplating the 10K in front of the fat rat (Billy is a relentless table selector and likes to play deep stacked). I mouth to Billy without making a sound ‘that is mother f_cking Russ Hamilton’ and Billy immediately clues in and decides that on this day, this wretched man is going to feel sorry for what he did.'

“Billy proceeds to engage Russ in conversation. Russ is clueless for the first few pleasantries, but then Billy starts to get under Russ's skin with an array of subtle verbal abuses that imply that Russ is karmic-ally screwed unlovable rat with no chance of having real friends and that Russ will have to always look over his shoulder and fear for his safety. Billy did it in a really clever style, nothing was a direct threat or insult, but it was clear that he was abusing the jerk. Finally, after I bluffed Russ off a hand with 8 high and showed, Billy said something to the effect of ‘tougher game when you cannot see your opponents cards’ and Russ snaps.'

“‘You are a f_cking d_ck.... a f_cking d_ck. If you believe everything you read your are just stupid, just a stupid f_cking d_ck. You do not know what you are talking about, you were not there. You just read about it and think you know . . .’, says Russ with a beaming bright red face and the veins on his neck popping out . . . As I was packing my chips, a sweaty foreheaded Russ was so upset, his heart pounding so hard, that I swear I could hear the blood struggling to squeeze through his mayonnaise encrusted veins.”

The man who needled Hamilton in the above account is none other than Billy Sharkey, who runs a video blog on YouTube called “Confessions of a Not So Professional Poker Player”. As the TwoPlusTwo thread grew in popularity, Sharkey decided to elaborate on the incident on his video blog.

The TwoPlusTwo community has overwhelmingly commended Sharkey on his actions; however, there are some who question the credibility of the story. Regardless of the story’s accuracy, Hamilton’s appearance at the Gulfstream Park Casino has been confirmed through photographic evidence, the most popular of which came from Jonathan Aguiar who took a picture of Hamilton and posted it on Twitter (the same photo that accompanies this article).

Aguiar, who goes by 'Fatal Error' on TwoPlusTwo, also posted: “I was at gulfstream until about 1:30 am . . . I had already lubricated the situation by whispering some pretty terrible things in russ's ear on my way out of the game. Got a pic of russ buying in with some of that UB dough tho (he lost about 5k).”

Florida has quickly become a hotspot for poker and it seems even Hamilton was intrigued enough to make an appearance; so much so that some Gulfstream Park Casino players say Hamilton has become a regular in the room. The Gulfstream Park Poker Room is open from 10 a.m. to 4 a.m. Sunday thru Thursday, and open 24 hours on Friday and Saturdays. You can also keep up on any developments by following along in the TwoPlusTwo thread.

*Photograph courtesy of Jonathan Aguiar

PokerNews has taken to the social media world, so be sure to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook.

• Tags

  Absolute PokerUltimate BetOnline PokerLive casino poker