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The Foundry Tom Goldstein Poker

The Crew Assembles

Illustration of a poker strategy dossier, computer simulation and two-player table, connected by red arrows.
Contributors
Bradley Hope
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Tom Goldstein had a losing reputation and access to billionaire poker games. Behind him, a team of professionals was preparing him to win.

Welcome to Whale Hunting, where we go inside the private games of the ultra-rich and meet the people trying to beat them.

Tom Goldstein had an idea. Wealthy businessmen would play him for enormous stakes because he was a lawyer with a reputation for losing at poker, rather than a professional they knew to avoid. What if he could keep that reputation while quietly becoming a much better player?

If you missed Friday’s edition, Goldstein is the Supreme Court lawyer at the centre of The Tell, my new investigation for The Foundry, Brazen’s digital magazine. In the two chapters published today, his legal work opens the door to private games where millions change hands, and he begins assembling something resembling an Ocean’s Eleven crew.

His opponent is Qin Si Xin, a Chinese businessman known as the Chairman and a major source of money for the high-stakes poker circuit. Goldstein has already lost to him. Paul Phua, the gambling impresario whose Las Vegas criminal case Goldstein helped get dismissed, controls access to the game. Andrew Robl, a professional poker player, leads the team preparing Goldstein for a rematch.

Here’s a taste:

Robl also brought in Keith Gipson to be Goldstein’s sparring partner. He and Robl had been part of the same crew of sponsored pros at Victory Poker, the online room the entrepreneur Dan Fleyshman launched in 2010, and had remained close in the years since. Gipson had been a professional blackjack player by the age of seventeen and owned a house in Las Vegas by twenty-one. Gipson's job would be to imitate the Chairman’s play so Goldstein could try out his strategy in practice.

Goldstein is preparing to win against a man whose real name he doesn’t even know. And to get back into the game, he needs Phua to guarantee money he cannot put up himself.

Read Chapters 3 and 4

All eleven chapters are free, with no registration required; the series concludes on Friday. If you’re new to the story, start with Chapters 1 and 2.

Subscribe free to The Foundry for an excerpt and a link as each instalment arrives. Only Foundry stories, with no unrelated promotions.

Until next time,

Bradley

Check out the Brazen Whale Hunting Collection.

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This is Whale Hunting, a newsletter and podcast delving into the secret worlds of money and power that we became obsessed with during our investigation into the globe-sprawling 1MDB scandal. That project changed our entire worldview. We wrote a book about it.

Back then, we were long-time reporters for The Wall Street Journal. Now, we’ve struck out on our own to uncover more brazen stories than ever. At Whale Hunting, we’re immersing ourselves in the murky waters of the ultra-wealthy and influential, from billionaires and kleptocrats to criminals, spies and corrupt officials.

Got a question or a tip for us? Get in touch at whalehunting@projectbrazen.com. You can also contact us securely here.

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