Mike "Timex" McDonald is one of the most accomplished tournament players on the planet, and he recently decided to do an AMA ("Ask Me Anything") on Reddit. We have compiled some of the most interesting answers from the discussion which you can read below. Did you know for example that the biggest tilt Mike ever went on was caused by a smoothie, or that he is completely addicted to a new video game developed by his friends?
– When asked whether poker is dying, McDonald answers that the game is indeed slowly dying, and that players have been making less and less money since around 2008.
– When asked about his favorite video game, he brings up Prismata, a game developed by his friends that he is completely addicted to. He plays around 40 hours a week and believes he has played around 1,000 hours this year alone, which probably cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars since he could have used this time to play. He fears that he is going to waste thousands of hours in 2015 on the game aswell.
– McDonald then answers a couple of questions about staking and backing. He claims that after winning huge at the Aussie Millions at the beginning of the year, he owed more than $2 million to various investors, and all of his debts were only written on a hotel laundry sheet with a pencil. He states that players that invest large amounts of money into backing are very relaxed, he talks about a German player who "basically backs half of the nosebleed community for super high rollers". While he does not disclose the name of the player, he states that while the player is only worth a few million dollars, he "operates a fund for about a dozen similar wealthy germans – all high stakes cash players who usually can’t be bothered to play tournaments". (If we had to guess, we would say the "backer king" is probably Philipp Gruissem).
– Mike also answers a question about his daily routine. At live tournaments he plays around 40-60 hours of poker a week and spends the rest of the time working out and rock climbing. During SCOOP/WCOOP he grinds a lot, but other than that he mostly just plays 12 hour sessions on Sundays and spends a lot of time with friends/family/girlfriend.
– When asked about AmayaStars, he says he is quite disappointed with the direction that the company has taken, but admits that if he spent 5 billion dollars on a company he would be wanting to maximize his profits aswell
– He describes a hand he lost at the Macau High Roller against Anatoly Filatov. Filatov raised from the small blind and McDonald re-raised with 63 in the big blind. On the flop of Q-5-4 Filatov openshoved, and McDonald called with his openender. The turn and river came K-4 and Filatov showed down 7-3 for seven high, while McDonald was left with just a six high.
– He believes there could be a staking market in the Daily Fantasy Sports industry, and states that one would need a $5 million bankroll to play their $27 tournament, so he just buys pieces from a friend who is a professional DFS player.
– The most tilted moment in his life came after he tried to make a smoothie, but his smoothie maker was broken, and has tried to use a food processor that he didn’t know was also broken. He read the instructions from start to finish several times and after 2.5 hours he was so tilted that he "could barely even speak".
– When asked about his sources of income, he states that he has a bunch of real estate, he has invested in startups and in bonds/stocks. Over time as he puts less effort in poker, he plans to put more effort into investments.
