Alex "Kanu7" Millar Opens up in Poker Life Podcast

Joey may be good with the face-paints, but his screen name pronunciation leave a lot to be desired...

The latest nosebleed player to join Joe "ChicagoJoey" Ingram on his Poker Life Podcast series was UK NLHE pro Alex "Kanu7" Millar, and it was certainly an entertaining one!

As you might expect if you've been following the recent poker news, the first part of the podcast was about Kanu's decision to leave PokerStars Team Online in light of the recent changes to the PokerStars VIP program.

According to Millar he was offered a new contract with Stars back in October but decided to hold off making his decision until the changes were announced (he knew changes were going to be made, but didn't know what they would be). Millar actually said he was even considering non-renewing his contract either way as he had been unhappy about some of Amaya's previous decisions (rake increase, conversion costs, taking away $50/$100 tables and replacing them with zoom tables as an 'experiment' and then not doing anything about them when they attracted no players).

When the decision was made to not reward Supernova and Supernova Elite players fully in 2016 who'd earned the status in 2015, it made it a no-brainer for Millar who said he wouldn't have stayed had they offered him 2 or 3 times more money.

He also went on to say how he doesn't think the current owners know what they're doing and that the methods they are using to attract more recreational players are badly flawed, which stems from not knowing enough about the ecology of the online poker world.

Talking NLHE, it seems Millar's ascent to high stakes was pretty phenomenal as he went for 100NL to 5000NL in the space of a year, and has stayed there or above for the past 7 years.

What's sure to be another major talking point of the podcast was Millar's admission that he had also heard that "NoelHayes" was in fact Brian Hasings but had said nothing to PokerStars, something he says perhaps he should have but at the time didn't give it much thought. Millar brought the subject up to defend Ike Haxton, who has received a lot of criticism on poker forums about not telling PokerStars about the multi-account when he had heard about it from Hastings.

Kanu says that at the time a couple of people messaged him to say that it was probably Brian Hastings playing on the account but not to worry as "everyone knows and he's -EV in these games anyway so nobody cares". After that he said he didn't given it any more thought until it all erupted. He said had he known NoelHayes was playing SCOOP etc against people who didn't know who he was then he may have said something, but as far as he was aware the high stakes community at large all knew who it was and thought he was a fish in the games so he didn't concern himself with it. He also said of the people who are accusing Ike of conspiring with Hastings to create a softer $25/$50 Zoom poolfor the 200 or so hands he played with him "get a grip, how do you even tie your shoelaces?".

Kanu also had some choice words for "friend of the podcast" Jason Mo (NLHE player who has given Kanu a lot of stick for bumhunting/not playing him). He laughed of J-Mo's abuse saying that J-Mo would never play him when he was a HU reg but now he (Kanu) has been concentrating on 6 max for a couple of years and isn't a top HU player anymore J-Mo is giving him grief for not playing him - despite the fact that when he joins a six-max table with him, the J-Mo insta-quits.

He also makes fun of J-Mo's assertion that he "spends a lot of time in the lab" (in reference to J-Mo accusing twitch favourite James Staples of not spending enough time in the lab) - saying that J-Mo doesn't create anything in the lab, but simply "carries the piss-pot for WCGRider", and that any increase in his skill level is due to being coached directly by WCG than by any original thought he puts in himself. All said in good humour or course...

There's plenty more quality content in what turned into a 3hr 11min podcast, check it out in its entirety below and please enjoy how Joe is apparently incapable of pronoucing Kanu (car-noo) correctly (he says canoe) despite being corrected on numerous occasions.