
Who Am I?
Hey. I’m Paul. I grew up in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York City. You know, where Daredevil comes from. Like him, I’ve always been torn between multiple lives: teaching martial arts and yoga, writing, recording music, playing poker for a living, and all sorts of other fun stuff.
More than anything, I love to learn new things, teach the things I know, and write about all the things I’m interested in, like math, language, movies, travel, and baseball. I’m a perpetual student of the world, making an experiment out of life.


WSOP NL200 Hand No. 1
Hand No. 1 – WSOP $200NL – 5 players - $400 effective Preflop: I have Tc3c in the BB 2 folds, BTN raises to $4, 1 fold, I call Flop: 4c5s9d ($8.50 pot – 2 players - $196 stacks) I check, BTN bets $4.50, I fold Question: Do I peel or check/raise this against this...
How to Lose Every Hand | Online Poker Vlog #6
I Am Now Left-Handed
Things have been not the easiest lately. A few months ago I (probably) pinched a nerve, developed a massive crap in my right shoulder, and stopped being able to properly use my right arm. Fortunately, I've always been somewhere between ambidextrous and mixed-handed -...
Day 1 of ZenMadman’s Nutty Pot Limit Omaha Journey
Pot Limit Omaha. You get four cards in your hand and five cards on the board. You make a five-card poker hand with exactly two cards from your hand and three from the board. Those are the rules. In this session, I talk about my approach to improving at PLO. I also...
Two Tables of $.25/$.50 No Limit
This is a session I played back in 2020, before doing too much work on No Limit Holdem. I'm definitely supposed to call those mighty ducks early on in the video, and I'm sure I make a ton of other mistakes as well. Feel free to have a chuckle at how poor my online...
Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Spoilers
And now it's time to spend another 45+ days acrobatically dodging spoilers. #DoctorStrange #NoSPOILERS! (Except I already saw the full trailer worth of spoilers in NWH FFS.) @EthicalPanda77 @SylverDreamer_ pic.twitter.com/REEYXlTOaZ— Paul Christopher Hoppe...
ZenMadman Presents, Episode 1: The Target
After appearing on about 100 episodes of other people's podcasts, I finally up and made my own. It's called ZenMadman Presents, and the first episode is very short. I imagine most of the early episodes will be very short. For now it consists of me reading some of my...