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When playing poker, is smoking dope the way to make your opponents look like dopes?
At least one top poker pro thinks so!
And he's not afraid to say so publicly!
Finnish poker pro Miikka Anttonen, writing this past week in his blog, says that many of the top professional poker players in the game today are "stoner types" who "smoke bongs" and that's why they make "millions of dollars.
Anttonen, 25, from Helsinki, Finland, surely knows what he's talking about--he's one of the most successful up-and-coming young poker pros out there.
According to official tournament records, he's won $312,940 playing poker tournaments online and another $254,924 playing in live tourneys, including $100,000 earned last year for winning the Helsinki Freezeout, a major no-limit Texas hold'em tourney held in his hometown.
He's also earned plenty playing online and offline cash games.
In his latest blog, posted Saturday, Anttonen wrote: "I know more than a few very successful poker players who aren’t even intelligent at all. They got pretty unlucky in the gene pool lottery in that department. Still, they absolutely crush poker, and without even realizing it, think on a higher level playing it than they would otherwise be capable of.
"When they discuss current affairs, politics, history or anything that matters in the grand scheme of things, they appear uneducated. But when they discuss poker, they talk like geniuses. I spoke to one of my smarter poker friends about this a while back, and he agreed that many of the most successful players are 'stoner types,' guys who smoke bongs, eat take-away food in their briefs and play it like a video game. And make millions of dollars.
"They do work too. No one gets good at poker, no matter how talented they are, without spending long nights on the computer studying. It’s an ongoing process and everyone I know spends an hour or two just studying poker, after doing long shifts at the office. You could never get any of these guys to do a minute of extra work at a regular job or at school. Poker just happens to be the one thing they are enthusiastic about, and studying something you’re enthusiastic about is actually fun."
So does Anttonen himself personally indulge in the wicked weed in order to increase his poker prowess?
Does he burn, in order to earn?
Does "boning up" lead to cleaning up?
Does smoking pot win you the pot?
Anttonen doesn't say, so it'll be up to his readers to read between the lines.
Incidentally, Anttonen isn't the first top poker pro to claim that many top poker players use outside influences to sharpen their game.
In the 1970s, poker legend Doyle "Texas Dolly" Brunson wrote a poker book titled "Super System" in which he claimed many top poker pros use extra-sensory perception or ESP.
By Tom Somach
Gambling911.com Staff Writer
