{"id":30045,"date":"2021-12-30T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-30T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/blog\/?p=30045"},"modified":"2022-05-27T03:56:19","modified_gmt":"2022-05-27T08:56:19","slug":"jose-girah-macedo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/blog\/jose-girah-macedo\/","title":{"rendered":"Jos\u00e9 \u201cGirah\u201d Macedo Poker Scandal: The Rise And Fall Of A Fake Prodigy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
The stories of\npoker prodigies have always been very popular in the poker community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hearing how the likes of Tom Dwan<\/a> or Annette Obrestad<\/a> came out of nowhere and conquered the game gives hope to everyone else that they could make it on the green felt and go on to live their best life as poker pro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whenever a new\nprodigy appears, it sets the poker world abuzz, and that\u2019s exactly what\nhappened in late 2010 when a thread popped up on the popular 2+2 poker forum\nabout a young gun from Portugal who was crushing high stakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to\nsome accounts, the alleged prodigy was still underage, but he was already\ncrushing some of the biggest online games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is how the myth of Jos\u00e9 \u201cGirah\u201d Macedo started and at first, people were simply intrigued. Who was this new kid, and was he really as good as the rumors made out?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sadly, what had the makings of a great poker story, similar to those of Tom Dwan or \u201cIsildur1<\/a>,\u201d ended up as one of the most notorious scandals in online poker history<\/a>, involving several other well-known pros.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For several\nmonths, rumors were spreading across the poker community but there was no real\ninformation about this alleged Portuguese poker prodigy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, in early\n2011, a thread appeared on the 2+2 forum that would set the course for future\nevents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The thread was\ncreated by none other than \u201cGirah\u201d himself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n After so many months of being kept in the dark, the entire community was eager to get some answers, and Jos\u00e9 Macedo generously offered some of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this thread,\n\u201cGirah\u201d gave his backstory and explained how he got into poker. According to\nthis post, he started grinding 1c\/2c tables and slowly building his bankroll,\nplaying six to 10 hours every single day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Describing his\npoker journey and how he kept learning and improving, Macedo left quite an\nimpression on the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A screenshot of\nhis results across various stakes was added to his post, and the numbers were\nreally impressive. It seemed like \u201cGirah\u201d was really crushing it on these\nsmaller European sites, but he wasn\u2019t willing to share his screen names.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Given all the\ncircumstances, this made sense. He had only recently become of legal age to\nplay poker, and it was probably better for him if his online aliases were kept\nhidden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, reading\nthat post with fresh eyes and knowing what we know now, something wasn\u2019t quite\nright about his story from the get-go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Too many metaphors, a mandatory sob story, and a few other bits and pieces that could indicate that not everything was how Macedo was trying to portray it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At that point in\ntime, it didn\u2019t seem like Macedo had any incentive to lie, and his story was\nbacked by two well-known pros: Dan \u201cJungleman\u201d Cates and Hasibi \u201cDogIsHead\u201d\nQureshi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, some\nposters were skeptical about the whole thing, claiming \u201cGirah” was a\nfictitious creation of these two players and that they actually used\n“Jungleman\u2019s\u201d stats in the post. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The picture,\nwhich was later removed from the thread, showed Macedo was over $1.6 million in\nprofit, playing everything from $3\/6 NL all the way up to $50\/100 NL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite these doubts, Jos\u00e9 \u201cGirah\u201d Macedo was hailed by most as the new poker prodigy, which opened doors for him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He landed a contract with Lock Poker and got involved with Poker Strategy, one of the leading poker training sites at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Makings Of Jos\u00e9 \u201cGirah\u201d Macedo<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n