Heads-Up, At Last

"Baby/ I go crazy/ There's fever in the funk house now" -The Rolling Stones

The line to get in stretches for more than a hundred yards. People have been here since morning, waiting for their chance to witness history. They played cards, read best-sellers, and thumbed through dog-eared copies of Bluff as they waited. And waited. And waited.

Now, many of them have seats inside the Penn & Teller Theatre. Tournament Director Jack Effel is introducing the players. Jeffrey Pollack is looking sharp in one of his trademark pinstripe suits. Yellow-shirted Cada fans are continuing their two-day liquor fest as they cheer on their man. That Jack Link's Beef Jerky Sasquatch thing is wandering around. And I'm back up in the skybox with my media brethren, waiting to watch it all unfold.

Barry Greenstein predicted 28 hands. I said 66. And only a few hours from now, poker will have a new World Champion.

For hand-by-hand action and chip counts, head over to PokerNews. For all the behind the scenes flavor, hit up my beloved at the Tao of Poker where he'll be live blogging all the action.

You can also follow us on Twitter:

@change100

@taopauly

@_otis_

@benjodimeo

@alcanthang

@pokerati

@matthewparvis

@pokerprincess

WSOP November Nine Fashion Report

At the start of yesterday's 17.5-hour odyssey that left us with our final two players in the WSOP Main Event (Joe Cada, the young luckbox and Darvin Moon, the old luckbox), I penned this fashion report for the Tao of Poker. I'm a fan of group costumes, so I was tickled to see that many November Nine fans arrived to cheer for their guys in custom-made shirts. Check it out.

Darvin Moon - Everyone's favorite Maryland logger chose a black polo, jeans, and his beloved New Orleans Saints hat for his final table outfit. No logos. No patches. Nada. Personally, I was hoping for him to play up his country-bumpkin image with a plaid shirt (totally hot this fall) and overalls, his supporters all carrying mini-chainsaws that they'd rev up each time their man won a pot. Instead, Moon's rural brethren are all sporting Wheeling Casino T-shirts that say "Bad Moon Rising" on the front. Eh. Points do go to those "Moonies" who brought heads-on-sticks, featuring their man's image.

James Akenhead - "The Limey" might very well be wearing the same clothes he played Day 8 in-- a black button-down shirt and a matching black Full Tilt hat. He has fans here but they are not in costume. FAIL.

Phil Ivey - Pauly tried to get Otis to bet on the color of Ivey's Full Tilt hat, offering him the field against baby blue. Otis wisely told my beloved to go fuck himself, knowing that's the biggest sucker bet he'd be offered all day. Indeed, Ivey chose his trademark sky-blue cap, pairing it with a black button-down. His superstar entourage, including Daniel Negreanu, Barry Greenstein, Jen Harman, and sorta-freakish but totally adorable superfans Mel & Pat Humphries all have prime spots onstage.

Kevin Schaffel - Schaffel is wearing the standard PokerStars sponsored player uniform of a black Stars shirt and matching hat, paired with smart tan trousers. He's not exactly lighting the fashion world on fire with that outfit, but at least he didn't take his ninth-place money and hit up Versace for some vertigo-inducing silk shirts. Schaffel's 80 supporters are all decked out in "Schaffel Up and Deal' shirts with a cartoonish rendition of their man on the front-- the weakest of the group fan costumes, IMO.

Steve Begleiter - Begs must be at least a little superstitious because he too is in the same clothes he wore when he made the November Nine back in July-- a navy polo and a red Full Tilt hat. ESPN's continuity peeps must be happy about that choice. His fans, however, get top marks from me for their blue "BEGS, BEGS BEGS!" shirts.

Eric Buchman - Black PokerStars hat. Black PokerStars shirt. No group costumes. Moving on...

Joe Cada - While Cada is in his black PokerStars uniform, his fans went for neon with garish yellow sweatshirts that made my eyes bleed after looking at them for five minutes in the hallway. The pullovers say "Cada" on the back. Just like that, in quotes. Like it's his nickname. But it's his actual name. I'm confused.

Antoine Saout - As much as I'd have loved to see him in a beret, Saout is dressed in head-to-toe Everest swag. Snooze. His fans are packed into the stage left balcony, all wearing royal blue soccer jerseys that say "Saout" on the back (and "Everest Poker" on the front, of course). Their nationalistic pride is showing, as a number of French flags have been spotted in their section. Personally I'd have gone for baguettes-- they're easily visible on-camera and can double as snacks.

Jeff Shulman - I saw Happy sauntering down the hallway earlier in a maroon Phish T-shirt (points for that), which he has now unfortunately covered with a ratty navy CardPlayer hoodie (booooo). It doesn't look like he's been to the barber (or bought a razor) since play finished up last July. Dude...even Pauly cleaned up after Festival 8 and lost the tour beard. In the immortal words of the joker-- "Get your shit together, man!"

Offstage at the November Nine

One year ago I sat less than ten feet from the final table as Peter Eastgate took down the 2008 WSOP Main Event. This year I'm a hundred feet in the air, hunkered down in the press "skybox" with a PokerNews badge around my neck but without a specific assignment. Sure, my alter ego Nicole Gordon will be scribbling away on several feature articles for the front page of PNews, but unlike previous years, I won't be doing any final table play-by-play. Can't say I'll miss it too much, save for the excitement of being right in the thick of the action. It'll be nice to string more than a few sentences together and feel more like an actual writer than a hand-logging robot.

For live reporting from the floor, check out the PokerNews Live Reporting page, where F-Train, Don Peters, and Eric Ramsey will be covering the action.

If it's behind-the-scenes action, dirt, and all the stuff most other outlets can't print, get thee to the Tao of Poker. I'll be contributing a few fashion reports in my (copious amounts of) downtime and will also be on Twitter.

The Waiting Room

There were 24 people inside the waiting room of a clinic in a moderately sketchy section of the city where the southern fringes of Hollywood meet the northern border of Koreatown. I sat among them for three hours this afternoon and in between chapters of The Omnivore's Dilemma, and outlining a piece for PokerNews I watched them. A lot. There really wasn't much else to do as I waited until 3:30 p.m. to be seen for my 12:45 appointment. All of us had one thing in common-- we had no health insurance.

Number of women: 22

Number of men: 2

Number of flamingly gay men: 1

Number of women carrying Louis Vuitton purses: 2

Number of women carrying Chanel totes : 1

Retail price of a Chanel 2.55: $2,250

Number of students from Hollywood High School: 5

How many of those students were passing the time by doing homework?: 0

How many textbooks were in their backpacks?: 0

Really?: Not a one.

How do I know they were from Hollywood High School? The student IDs around their necks.

Number of people reading books in the room: 3

Ethnicities of people reading books: White, Filipino, Asian

Number of people using texting devices and/or cell phones: 15

How many of those devices were iPhones? 11

Bad television shows that played out during my wait time: Some sort of talk show, Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?, and Divorce Court.

People who were playing along with Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? 4

Number of them who are smarter than a fifth grader: 1

Number of phone calls the actress sitting next to me received from her agent: at least 10

Number of auditions she missed while waiting for her 1:30 "appointment": seemingly one really important one

Total time spent in waiting room: 2 hours, 46 minutes

Total bill for a year's supply of birth control: $769.00

Number of times I said "fuck" out loud after being presented with the bill: at least 3

So that breaks down to... what exactly?: $2.11 a day to not burden myself, my boyfriend and society-at-large with a child. Which actually is a lot cheaper than actually having one.

Silver lining: At least I was home by 4:20.

This Month at PokerNews

It's been a crazy month at Casa Change. In addition to my daily duties at PokerNews, I covered the WCOOP for PokerStars Blog and didn't see the sun for many many days. Which was mostly OK with me, because the basin has been quite the inferno these past few weeks. That, and I love the weird shit that comes on television around 4:30 a.m., like infomercials for fitness contraptions and 1980's movies-of-the-week. Still, the nocturnal hangover lingers a week later, as I continually fall asleep at random times during the day and still feel no desire to head to sleep before three in the morning.

Just in case you missed it, here's a look at some of the pieces I wrote for PokerNews this month. The Sebok piece came out yesterday.

Will Joe Sebok's Signing with Ultimate Bet be a Good Thing? (with Michael Friedman)

The Top 10 WCOOP Moments of 2009

2 Months. 2 Million.: How to Build Your Own War Room

The Explosion of Poker Tours Worldwide: Good or Bad for Poker? (with Matthew Parvis)

ESPN's World Series of Poker Coverage: Buy or Sell?

PokerNews Jet Set: Top 10 Travel Tips for Poker Players

PokerNews Jet Set: Aruba

PokerNews Jet Set: London

PokerNews Jet Set: Barcelona

PokerNews Jet Set: Los Angeles

WSOP Main Event on ESPN: Hand of the Week, Our MVP and More

WSOP Main Event on ESPN: Hellmuth's Entrance, Hand of the Week, and Our MVP

WSOP Main Event on ESPN: Fossilman Takes on Costanza, Hand of the Week, and Our MVP

WSOP Main Event on ESPN: The Phil Hellmuth Show

WSOP Main Event on ESPN: Aussies, ElkY, Ivey and More

WSOP Main Event on ESPN: Ivey Dominates Feature Tables as Bubble Bursts

Though I may be an exceptionally lazy blogger when it comes to this space, I do flutter around the Twitterverse daily, if you'd care to follow my half-baked musings there.

The New Gig

So, I alluded to something a few weeks back here on the blog , but never exactly cleared up the whole mystery of my new writing gig. There's no mystery about it at all, actually and I've already been at it for about two weeks.

As many of you know, Matt Parvis (formerly of Bluff Magazine) took over the reins as Editor-in-Chief over at PokerNews at the beginning of the month, and as part of what will be a dramatic re-structuing of the site, he brought me on as a full-time writer and editor along with Michael Friedman and Elaine Chaivarlis. The three of us are presently writing the bulk of the content on the front page, and since change100 isn't exacly a byline-worthy moniker, my pieces appear under the name Nicole Gordon.

Then, come September, PokerNews will get another all-star team member when Pauly starts his Sunday Op-Ed Series that will run through the end of the year. How's that for a score?

September will be busy under this roof. I'm also on the Otis-captained WCOOP coverage team for the fine folks at PokerStars Blog which will render me partially nocturnal, while Pauly is finishing up the final edits on Lost Vegas. It's turned out to be creatively thrilling to watch the book come together for him. It inspires me. It helps me to see the future, something I haven't been all that adept at lately.

In other news, it's hot as fucking balls outside and this apartment is a mini-oven with the exception of the one slice of couch I'm perched on at the moment, which happens to be in the direct path of the portable air conditioner, which is blasting on high. Oh, also the cable is broken and there is allegedly not a single technician in all of Los Angeles who can fix it today. Fuck you Time Warner.

Cook with Change: Shrimp & Orzo

Good God. After two weeks on the road eating a combination of lot food, fast food and greasy spoon diner food, I was so utterly psyched to pick up some fresh ingredients and make myself a proper dinner. The result was so damned tasty I'm sharing it with you immediately. This dish was inspired by the Walla Walla sweet onions I tasted up in Washington State and the huge, succulent shrimp I saw on display at Pike Place Market in Seattle. If organic ingredients are available to you, use them whenever possible.

Sweet Onion and Cherry Tomato Orzo with Grilled Shrimp and Fresh Basil

(Serves 2)

1/2 lb. wild-caught shrimp, peeled & deveined

1/4 lb. orzo pasta

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved

1/2 medium sweet onion, chopped

1/4 cup shredded parmesan cheese

1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped

1 tsp fresh thyme, finely chopped

1 generous squeeze of lemon juice

olive oil

red pepper flakes

salt & pepper

While bringing a pot of lightly salted water to a boil (for the orzo), place the shrimp in a shallow bowl. Season with salt, pepper, 1 clove chopped garlic and the chopped thyme. Drizzle shrimp with 1 tbsp olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice. Mix by hand, coating the shrimp and let sit about 10-15 mins.

Cook the orzo for 8-10 minutes, drain, and rinse with lukewarm water. Set aside. Heat a saute pan, (or a grill if you have one) and cook the shrimp for 2 minutes on each side. Remove shrimp from the heat and set aside. Add another dash of olive oil to the pan and add in the sweet onions, garlic, and as many red pepper flakes as you can handle (I used about 1/4 tsp). Sweat the onions for 2 minutes before adding the cherry tomatoes. Cook another 3 minutes.

Add the orzo, shrimp, chopped basil, and parmesan to the pan. Mix together and let everything heat through for about 1 minute. Serve immediately.