Lon McEachern

Annette Obrestad is BACK. 🔥 The youngest WSOP bracelet winner in history returns to the felt after 8 years away… right where it all began. Prague. WSOPE 2026. History meets a new era. Check out the full article below ⬇️ wsop.com/news/annette-o…

Pass along my warmest regards when you contact her

@Pete_De There are rooms around the Bay. I’m kind of out of that loop. Internet search or Poker Atlas can help

@lonmceachern Have there been poker room closings in the Bay Area? We need a good room with daily or weekend tournaments in the Bay.

With, seemingly, constant news of poker room closings, it’s great to see the re-opening of the room @RedHawkCasino in Placerville, CA #ShuffleUpAndDeal Soft opening today. Cash games and daily tournaments

@ToddSlagle @RedHawkCasino lol—. Thought trust said ‘26. Soft opening today. Grand opening shortly. Good ( young) eyes

@lonmceachern @RedHawkCasino Late November? Why wait so long?

Education depends on underlying cultural substrates way more than is generally acknowledged. I’m doubtful that many “methodologies” can be simply replicated. One of my favorite examples from the early 00s when Finland was regarded as the global rock star of public education: If you looked at top US states, MA and MN, they were outperforming Finland. Insofar as most Finnish-Americans live in MN, it is plausible that Finnish-Americans were outperforming Finns. To slice it up differently, if one looked only at US households with three or fewer TVs, the US scores were comparable to Finland. What brought us down is we had something like 80% of households with more than 3 TVs (all this before smartphones, which made everything worse for everyone). And since then Finland has declined considerably. So the thousands of headlines claiming that the US should replicate the Finnish system were misleading at best. I actually like a lot about the Finnish system. But it is extremely simplistic to believe that replicating certain policies elsewhere will result in similar outcomes elsewhere.

@flowidealism There is a view that other countries teach their children in a better, more efficient, and practical manner than does the USA. Do you agree? How is the methodology different?

John Taylor Gatto was named New York State Teacher of the Year. Upon receiving the award, he quit and spent the rest of his life writing devastating critiques of the educational system he had mastered. Gatto argued that regardless of the official curriculum, schools actually teach seven hidden lessons. The first is confusion. Students learn disconnected facts across dozens of subjects with no integration or meaning. The second is class position. Students learn their place in the social hierarchy. The third is indifference. Students learn that nothing is worth finishing because the bell always rings. The fourth is emotional dependency. Students learn to surrender their will to a chain of command. The fifth is intellectual dependency. Students learn to wait for experts to tell them what to think. The sixth is provisional self-esteem. Students learn that their worth depends on expert evaluation. The seventh is that they are always being watched and have no privacy. These lessons, Gatto argued, are the actual function of schooling. The explicit curriculum of reading, writing, and arithmetic is almost incidental. The real purpose is to produce passive, dependent, compliant citizens who wait for authorities to tell them what to do and think. Trad schooling amounts to thirteen years of training in being passive and dependent. I have seen this play out with hundreds of students. When I created Montessori middle schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, about half the students came up through Montessori elementary and about half came from public schools. When we opened, the Montessori kids immediately began doing their work, taking initiative, choosing what to tackle first. The public school students were lost. They would stare at their desks until we walked over and helped them plan their morning. It took at least a semester, sometimes a full year, before they could function in an environment that asked them to direct their own learning. These were not less intelligent children. They had simply been trained differently. For years, someone else had made all the decisions about what they would do, when they would do it, and how they would do it. When that structure was removed, they did not know how to operate. Agency is natural to children unless we train it out of them. When I coach parents on evaluating their children's education, I tell them to ignore grades entirely. The question is whether their children are taking initiative, being responsible, and becoming empowered moral beings. If a child is getting straight A's but has no initiative and no sense of personal responsibility, that child is being damaged by their education regardless of how it looks on paper.

@TylerPoker @TVPokerRoom Oh, are you coming out here?

I see lots of airport chaos news out there right now. Vegas to Sacramento was just as efficient as always today. Just in case any of my vegas poker peeps are worried about that enroute to @TVPokerRoom

Today Jordan Gumberg won on the @DPWorldTour A reminder that he wouldn’t have been in the event and would have lost his card, if he didn’t make this wedge on the final hole of the season last year. Think about how ridiculous that is.

@HoldemMedia_Dan @TylerPoker @Sandrettooooo @WPT Hey Dan!!

@TylerPoker @Sandrettooooo @WPT @lonmceachern 👀

The @WPT Rolling Thunder is right around the corner. I’m running a silly fun Golf Scramble on Wednesday 3/25. Please let me know if you’re interested. Anybody who plays any cash or any tournament is invited

Hey!!

Hey @GolfChannel You have any editors jobs open??

Just breathe. We still love you.

@lonmceachern Tennis balls also! We need a national ban

As a long time eater of Pringles I understand the need for the foil seal, but why do they need that plastic lid?

Time for another WSOPE Rewind with @lonmceachern and @NormanChad ! This one takes us back to London in 2008 when @LuckBoxJuanda and Stanislav Alekhin battled for over 22 hours heads up 👀

@drhingram AHA!! I KNEW there was precedent for moving your ball out of a divot! #PlayTheCourseAsItIsMyAss

Britain used to be a real country

@sharkvoice You better save one for me when I’m back in town!!

Want. Need. Yes please.

When @GolfChannel checked in on @akshaybhatia_1 they praised his improved short game. Doubtful they meant it sartorially.

@wazz222 Hey John- sorry we missed connections at Thunder. Hit me up on DM’s please. Cheers