Dan Michalski

Pokerati in Chief

Founder and editor of Pokerati, Dan Michalski is an award-winning journalist whose entre into poker came as the first ever official blogger for the WSOP. He's also served as editor of ALL IN magazine and PokerBlog.com. Accomplishments on the felt include winning the inaugural (and only) WSOP-Dream Team Poker event in 2009 and taking second place in his own NL/PLO event at the inaugural (and final?) Detox Poker Series in 2010.

Outside of poker, he's written for The New York Times, Men's Health, Cosmopolitan, Maxim, the London Observer, the Dallas Observer, Texas Monthly, D Magazine, The Dallas Morning News, and many other publications. He also was the founding Las Vegas Editor of Thrillist.

Posts by DanM:

  • Pokerati for Sale

    29 Jun 2023

    It occurred to me I couldn’t just leave “Doyle Brunson Dies” as the final post on this blog. That would be like ending Star Wars after The Force Awakens. But it’s a new era for poker, indeed. Records already are falling, and we’re almost certain the Main Event will finally break the 2006 record for […]

  • Doyle Brunson Dies

    15 May 2023

    For years, “Doyle Brunson Dies” has been the default placeholder headline in poker media discussions about how you would handle a super-big story that every news outlet is gonna have, and every player is gonna care about. By now y’all have presumably heard, Doyle Brunson, the Godfather of Poker, Texas Dolly, Ten-Deuce, died Sunday in […]

  • (Anti-)Online Gambling Legislation Refiled and Reshuffled

    02 Oct 2016

    Getting my gaming commentary game back on, with an appearance as a talking head-and-torso for a special Global Gaming Expo episode of APCW Perspectives, featuring venerable online gambling gadfly J. Todd at the mic. My part begins at about 5:50, after J. and Becky Liggero talk about the American Gaming Association’s new push for nationwide […]

  • Un-tilted

    18 Sep 2016

    So online poker is pretty dead, huh? It’s a late Saturday night/Sunday AM in Las Vegas, and we just need two more players to fill up the lone $1 sit-n-go on WSOP.com. There’s one player waiting on a $100 SNG, and I’m already down about $12 on the most active NLH and PLO cash tables. […]

  • Tell Science

    23 Jan 2015

    Can you spot the liar? The New York Times asked that question — recognizing right out the gate this is supposed to be a poker skill — and presented an interactive exercise featuring video clips of people answering seemingly innocuous questions, to see, essentially, if you can spot a simple bluff. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/03/21/science/can-you-spot-the-liar.html (Apparently the body-language-reading […]

  • California Dreamin’

    25 Nov 2014

    So poker people are buzzing again about the promise of California for online poker. It’s true what RJ gaming reporter Howard Stutz says, that this market represents something of a holy grail for the liquidity dependent. But that’s also the reason I’ll stick by my assertions that California needs about half a country to go […]

  • Poker Justice: 7 years for killing a cheater

    19 Nov 2014

    We should probably be sadder because someone died and poker had everything to do with it. But at the same time … man hosts poker game, catches brother cheating, shoots brother in the chest and kills him, gets seven years. Seven-ish to be more exact. Seems about right, and arguably a +EV move — though […]

  • 2014 WSOP: Year of the Young Adult?

    10 Nov 2014

    The latest incarnation of the November Nine gets underway in a few hours, and as per usual there’ll be talk of poker’s “young guns” dominating the big-money prize spots. The old man at the table this year is Bruno Politano, topping out the field chronologically at the crotchety age of 32. However, while all the […]

  • Online Poker on the Uptick?

    13 Sep 2014

    Believe it or not, I’m playing online poker again. I’ve bought in three times already, so yay, it works (and is super-easy to play for real money), but cannot yet report on the cash-out process, because you know … damn river. But now that we have online poker in Nevada definitively running and here to […]

  • Education of a Poker Player Responsible Gaming Service Provider

    04 Aug 2014

    It’s Responsible Gaming Education Week, August 4-8, you probably know, or maybe not, because “responsible gaming” isn’t exactly something we celebrate in a culture that extols the virtue of being “All In”. And it’s not likely that poker is about to see any special prizes for best bankroll management or superior game selection or, say, […]