Suzie was a good friend of mine. She was a genuinely good /kind hearted person (in my dealings ). Less than a year before her tragic death, I was heading down to south Fla for a poker trip, and she asked me if I was going. I said yes and she asked if she could tag along in our air bnb . I said yes no problem . It was only then where I kinda indirectly found out of her struggles. She didn’t actually play any poker that trip. She said for a few days she didn’t feel like it , then was supposed to be getting cash dropped off to her that never arrived . It was obvious those were covers , but I didn’t care either way. She ended up just crashing with us for a week and never really left the house. I was happy to let her eat our food and hang and try to sort Things out. I made a little run in that main and she was more invested in the tournament than I was, with no piece . She Never asked for me to put her in or to anything , just wanted to be invested with what I was doing. Asking about hands and updates nonstop. I could tell she was struggling and in a bad way and just needed some optimism in her life. I was happy to be able to help her in some kind of way that week with a place to stay and some laughs . She was a super kind person, who seemed to have been through a lot in her life. A little corky , a little out there , but a cool person. This gambling world is unrelenting . No matter how much you success you have, it’s so difficult to parlay that into long term life success. I was devastated when I heard the news. You always feel some type of guilt as you question could you have done more. If you have a gut feeling someone is really struggling , they most likely are. Don’t ever hesitate to check in with people. You never know what people are truly going through , and how much a 5 min conversationcan help and be the difference . #RipSuzQ
Susie Zhao was found in a Michigan parking lot - raped, murdered, and set on fire at 33. For ten years she had been one of the sharpest players in American poker: she sat across from grown men who couldn’t read her and cleaned them out to the last chip. That entire life - the skill, the lights, the crowd - came to $224,671 and a death almost no one even noticed
They called her “Susie Q.” In the video below - one of the last times a camera ever caught her at a table - you can see why the game loved her: young, calm, smiling, quietly taking apart a seat full of men twice her size. This is the life poker sells you. The lights, the respect, the strangers online who adore you
Here’s the bill it hides. The game pays in “freedom,” and the price of that freedom is everything that anchors a person - no home, no schedule, no one who needs you by morning. Just the next table, the next city, the next swing from flush to broke. Susie was good enough to live inside it for ten years, and $224,671 is all the record books say she had to show for a decade of airports, all-night games, and people who only knew her with chips in front of her
By 2020 she’d drifted back to Michigan, off the streams and mostly alone. She accepted a place to stay from a man she barely knew. He raped her, killed her, and burned her body in a park-and-ride lot
Here’s the part that should scare you. The table hands a gambler a family of strangers and quietly deletes the real one - and strangers don’t come looking when you stop showing up. Every person who ever cheered “Susie Q” would swear they loved her. Not one of them was in the room where she died - and the poker world found out she was gone the way you just did: secondhand, too late to matter
So before you buy the gambler’s life - the freedom, the swings, the crowd chanting your name - answer the only question that lands the second the cameras cut: who would actually come looking for you?
One brave man saved the life of many . Thankful for our veterans, police, fire , and active military every day.
“THEY SAID SOMEBODY IS SHOOTING”: New 911 audio captures a caller reporting gunfire at a Citibank corporate office in Tampa, Florida, as deputies race to respond.
“We got shots fired,” a corporal radios. “I’ve got a possible shooter inside.”
Bodycam footage shows deputies searching for the gunman, who entered the cafeteria after fatally shooting a woman outside. An armed security guard and Marine Corps veteran confronted the suspect and shot him, ending the attack.
More than 3,200 people were on campus when the shooting unfolded.
God fucking damn it here we go. Why do we have to be a god damn circus. How is this “maturing”?
Desantis/Rubio 2028 🇺🇸
Based on the midterm results, DeSantis is now significantly likelier to be on the 2028 Republican ticket as president or vice president. He was the contingency plan if this outcome occurred, which is why he distanced himself from the Trump administration after the 2024 primary. Florida remaining red while other major states flipped gives him a concrete selling point: a model that held up under national headwinds.
If Republicans want a ticket that creates more distance from Trump, Tulsi Gabbard is a moderate VP option.
Possible tickets, ranked by association with the Trump administration:
1. Vance/Rubio
2. Rubio/Vance
3. Rubio/DeSantis
4. DeSantis/Rubio
5. DeSantis/Gabbard
I like Vance, but his close ties to the administration may make him a liability to voters after these losses.
I now believe option 4 (DeSantis Rubio) is the most likely ticket with the greatest chance to win.
Would you support this ticket in 2028?
It got a little sweaty , but the job is done.
“ Dont F with Florida “!!!! Show out @AshleyMoodyFL and Bryon Donalds. Great speech Ashley. Thank the lord that radical wack job Angie Nixon didn’t snakeoil the senate race . Got a little sweaty there as well. Expected tough night overall , but thankfully FLA continued to do its part.
Big (but obvious ) voting day in Washington, Arizona and two other states . Vote NO on men competing in women’s sports. Should be clear common sense, but here we are.
Jessica alba is still smoke, and great costume . Sad she caved to the woke cancel culture feminist mob.
Bob was still pretty shit tee ballls aside , but with Wesley’s struggles with driver , that’s really all they needed from him. Gotta give Bobby Ray his flowers , after the first brutal 9 holes, he was nails day 2. Gotta respect the bounce back. And I appreciate how hard he is on himself . Too much “good shot , it’s ok, I got you “ in these. It’s ok to just say , even to your partner , “that was total dog shit “.
Insert Salim as another unsung hero. He was nails in his Match, along with @BarstoolGruden getting a big W.
Happy bday to the big dog himself @realcharder30 . We need to get the gang back together one of these days . @TheFitnessJurk , Robby , @HustlerGrune . Behind the grind !!!
This man speaks calmer , more eloquently , and more thoughtful than any candidate on either side . March him out !!
Poker in 2026 lol
Poker is dying in Las Vegas.
We asked VIPs in our network to rate their private poker experience here over the last 18 months.
The average was a 4 out of 10.
Don’t take my word for it.
Here’s what actually happened.
For the last three years, we weren’t the game runners.
We were the guys in the middle.
If you’re a recreational who played high stakes private poker in Vegas during that time, there’s a good chance you either got booked through STAX or sat in a game we helped fill.
Our job was simple: know our guy.
Who does he enjoy playing with? How many pros is he willing to tolerate? What kind of side games ruin the experience for him? What makes him ACTUALLY want to come back next time?
We spent years having those conversations with recreationals, learning what they loved and hated about certain games.
Then we’d look at what was running and try to put our guy in the best spot that day.
But once our guy sat down, we didn’t control what happened next.
Sometimes the lineup started great. But then a couple recreationals leave, and more pros get called instead of the game breaking.
Other nights, the lineup was never really there to begin with. The game runner would send it anyway, hoping for walk-ins, and then fill the empty seats with pros just to keep it running.
Our agency was part of a system where we were compensated by pro seats, and we weren’t the only ones getting them.
Each promise a game runner made to give a pro access made sense on its own. But without a hard cap on pros, those promises added up until the lineup became something our recreational players never would have signed up for.
So that was on me.
I was the one asking my guy to trust the game while having no authority over the lineup changes.
For three years, I thought enough recreational feedback, churn data, and common sense would convince Vegas game runners to take guest experience seriously.
Plenty of them understood the problem.
But when a game got short, they still had to decide whether to add more pros or break.
Most chose to run.
We kept hearing the same complaints and bringing the same feedback back to the game runners making those decisions.
It didn’t work.
After three years of watching our guys have the same bad experiences, I had to accept that if the game runners didn’t share our lineup standards, there was no way for me to enforce them.
The thing is, these weren’t standards we invented.
We adopted them directly from what recreational players told us they wanted.
Great action. Fun people. Lineups you can trust.
So now we’re running our own games at Venetian with your standards, published and enforced.
If the lineup isn’t good enough, we cancel.
If it ever falls below, we break.
And if there’s something you think we’re missing about what makes a great poker experience, we want to hear it.
These games are part of Venetian’s new premium collection. We put a strict limit on the number of pros.
From a time-collection standpoint, they’re the most expensive games in the city.
From a value standpoint, they’re a hell of a lot cheaper than getting bled out by three or four robots.
More importantly, you spend the night with people who treat poker like the social game it’s supposed to be.
And even if you’re not poker famous, you can still get a shot to play on stream with some of the biggest names.
If you missed our first stream, watch it here: youtube.com/watch?v=iMzAQNuO…
Lineups will change.
Our standards won’t.
DM me for access to @stax_poker at Venetian.
