Fahra is obviously rated as one of the best players in the world but looking at his play on High Stakes Poker throughout both series' he looks like a total fish.

- He routinely calls raises and even reraises with very weak unsuited aces
- I know you need to mix up your play occasionally but he raises with junk so often it would be mixing up his play to raise with a proper hand.
- He pushed all in preflop with A9 against Antonio when he had very little fold equity.

Is there any chance he has allowed an advertisng budget of a few hundred thousand dollars to give the impression he is this bad in NL Hold 'Em cash games, hoping to profit from everyone who plays him over the next couple of years having watched the show?

If not and he always plays this way, he surely can not be a winning cash game NL Hold 'Em Player.

Look at the stack sizes, they are playing VERY deep stacks and if he hits one of his fishy hands he's going to stack someone.

He was a winner on season one, and looks down on season 2, but who cares?
HSP is great for the players profiles and is free advertising ( well, as long as they dont bust ).

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I asked myself that too but everybody does those donk raises on HSP?

Even Greenstein did this hefty raise with 95 or something like that.

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Sammy's style may not be as successful at a table of seasoned pros (especially because they all know his style so well) but can you imagine him at a table of amateurs?

If that's the case MrMcJ why isn't he adapting to the table?

I saw Barry Greenstein make moves but they would be occasional moves when there was a table full of limpers and he sensed weakness. Making a potsized raise in position for perhaps 5% of your stack with any 2 cards against perceived weakness is +EV play.

Calling a reraise for 20% of your stack with A4o when there is a good chance you are either up against a pair higher than 4 or a dominating ace is almsot never +EV.

Missed your comments Gryff. But like I said above. Fahra was commiting a significant portion of his stack with weak holdings. I'll dig some examples out when I watch some shows again tonight.

Good point.
Mind you I don't think Sammy is the best at the table but I'm sure he's been the best at SOME table some point in his career.

I actually get a kick out of watching Sammy play, but I think when you're watching High Stakes Poker you're seeing a more psychological card game than what we may be used to seeing in tournament poker.

Tournament poker is a completely differnt game than ring, and these are people who I'm sure have played quite a bit with each other so I don't think they're playing the cards as much as they're playing the player. I mean there's so many instances where people are calling each others hands right on the money. There was one hand where Matasou called Daniel N's hand (an A7 IIRC) spot on in a hand he wasn't even involved in. I think the level of play that's going on there is a bit deeper than what most of us may be accustomed to.

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In season 2, Sammy got short stacked and this isn't condusive to his syle of play. I think he was willing to push a little harder than normal because he would be more comfortable busting and rebuying to a normal stack.

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farha isnt a good holdem player, according to good holdem players (greenstien)