The stories of
poker prodigies have always been very popular in the poker community.

Hearing how the likes of Tom Dwan or Annette Obrestad 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.

Whenever a new
prodigy appears, it sets the poker world abuzz, and that’s exactly what
happened in late 2010 when a thread popped up on the popular 2+2 poker forum
about a young gun from Portugal who was crushing high stakes.

According to
some accounts, the alleged prodigy was still underage, but he was already
crushing some of the biggest online games.

This is how the myth of José “Girah” 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?

Sadly, what had the makings of a great poker story, similar to those of Tom Dwan or “Isildur1,” ended up as one of the most notorious scandals in online poker history, involving several other well-known pros.

The Makings Of José “Girah” Macedo

For several
months, rumors were spreading across the poker community but there was no real
information about this alleged Portuguese poker prodigy.

Then, in early
2011, a thread appeared on the 2+2 forum that would set the course for future
events.

The thread was
created by none other than “Girah” himself.

After so many months of being kept in the dark, the entire community was eager to get some answers, and José Macedo generously offered some of them.

In this thread,
“Girah” gave his backstory and explained how he got into poker. According to
this post, he started grinding 1c/2c tables and slowly building his bankroll,
playing six to 10 hours every single day.

Describing his
poker journey and how he kept learning and improving, Macedo left quite an
impression on the community.

A screenshot of
his results across various stakes was added to his post, and the numbers were
really impressive. It seemed like “Girah” was really crushing it on these
smaller European sites, but he wasn’t willing to share his screen names.

Given all the
circumstances, this made sense. He had only recently become of legal age to
play poker, and it was probably better for him if his online aliases were kept
hidden.

But, reading
that post with fresh eyes and knowing what we know now, something wasn’t quite
right about his story from the get-go.

<…….

Source: https://www.casino.org/blog/jose-girah-macedo/