Pot Committed

The Last November Nine?

2011-11-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

I was perusing my own archives yesterday, ostensibly to select some of my better pieces as writing samples for prospective employers. Not that there are any of those knocking my door down these days, but better to be prepared, right? In between my realization that I had not composed a traditional resume in over 12 years and the desire to bathe my scratchy throat with a glass of ice-cold chocolate milk, I came upon a list of op-ed ideas I'd scribbled down on October 4, 2010. One of them jumped out at me.

"Has the November Nine run its course?"

I didn't end up penning that one. I probably could or would have written the opposite side of that argument in 2008 or 2009. Back then, it was an innovative idea that had the potential to generate a lot of revenue for Harrah's and the "Niners" alike. And for a while, it did.

Later that day, I read this PokerListings piece, in which writer Arthur Crowson questions WSOP communications honcho Seth Palansky about the future of the November Nine.

“We’re committed to it but I think what we learned over the summer with the live and taped programming is that we’re going to have to revisit the concept after this November,” clarified Palansky.

My, how one year changes everything.

More than six months post-Black Friday, we've seen the poker television landscape decimated. Poker After Dark? No mas. NBC Heads-Up? No mas. My favorite new poker show The Big Game? No mas. And ratings for everything else, including the slickly packaged Mori Eskandani-produced WSOP broadcasts? In. The. Shitter. I'll go out on a limb and say that even if the events of Black Friday hadn't occurred, the drastic culling of poker TV hours was still an inevitability-- it just would have taken more time.

Bottom line? People just don't seem to want to watch it anymore, no matter how many bells and whistles are tacked on. Heck, even I don't watch it anymore and I'm supposed to be one of those "hard-core fans" producers and advertisers and network execs count on. These days, if I'm going to dedicate hours to watching poker, it's in the form of a strategy video or a final table replay-- something that can (and has) enabled me to make more money in live games. Because I'm sure not making it in the media anymore. And living in San Francisco sure is expensive.

This year's November Nine will more likely than not be the last one we see. One of the primary reasons for creating the four-month delay was to give the Niners the opportunity to pick up sponsorships, do a shitload of publicity, and "build anticipation" for the final table. Now, with poker's principal advertisers and sponsors (online poker sites) sidelined in the United States, what sort of deals are these guys going to get, if any? Mainstream corporate sponsorship has been the holy grail the Harrah's brass has sought for the WSOP since the boom, but their quest has largely come up empty in terms of the November Nine (and not for lack of trying. Really really trying). Rather than wearing patches touting Nike, Red Bull, or Mercedes-Benz, the Niners have largely shilled PokerStars, Full Tilt, and various online training sites. Oh, and that patio furniture company that threw a few bucks at The Grinder last year.

Not only has poker's sponsorship model drastically changed/disappeared, the game's delivery system has evolved. Rather than sticking with a produced, tightly packaged episodic format aired months after an event's completion, more and more of them are being live streamed online. Broadcasts like Live at the Bike and EPT Live pioneered this concept as far back as 2005, and it's now being widely used on the WPT, the WSOP-Circuit, and the WSOP itself. It provides instant gratification for the viewer, and technological advances have made it much cheaper and easier to implement. What sort of hard-core fan will still sort through hundreds of hands on a live blog trying to extrapolate the action when he or she can simply watch it all unfold on a 15-minute delay?

Put it this way. I watched the live stream constantly while the WSOP Main Event was playing down to a final table this July. But I haven't watched a single packaged WSOP episode on ESPN this year. And I'll probably watch the live stream again next weekend when the cards go in the air inside the Penn & Teller theatre.

Fans haven't changed, but their appetite for certain delivery systems has. I don't watch movies in 2011 the same way I watched them in 1999 and I don't follow poker the same way I did in 2007. Only three years ago, I made the bulk of my income live-blogging tournaments and now it's a method that is nearly obsolete. The optimist in me thought the death of tournament reporting and the rise of the live stream might give way to a rebirth of longer-form poker writing, but Black Friday put a stop to that when the taps of the two online behemoths pumping cash into the industry were abruptly turned off.

Magazines and online sites I once wrote for have precious few advertising dollars rolling in. Some have folded altogether. Others will no doubt follow in the coming dark years of the game, before the U.S. Government gets their shit together and finally legalizes online poker. But I have no more faith in those charlatans and snake-oil salesmen than I do in Full Tilt Poker, who still owes me $1,945 of my own money.

I believe there's a larger reason why folks have stopped watching televised poker. It's not only that the casual fans stopped tuning in as the boom drew its last breaths. It's not only that Black Friday effectively stopped the influx of new American players to the game. It's not only that televised final tables were increasingly made up of people folks had never heard of rather than familiar old-school pros. It's all of those things, but it's bigger than that.

People aren't just broke, they're broken. They are so fucking broken they're actually starting to turn off the Real Housewives and rise up out of their self-induced collective coma against the institutions rigging the game in this country. Russ Hamilton's crimes are downright quaint when held up against the shit Goldman Sachs gets away with every single day. With economic depression, high unemployment, falling wages and a bleak future facing the citizens of our hopelessly sold-out country, who the hell wants to watch a bunch of 23 year-olds in hoodies play cards for millions of dollars? Why give a rat's ass about the newest poker-minted millionaire when you can't even play a $10 sit-n-go in your own home anymore thanks to our government?

Think about why people got hooked on televised poker in the first place. Not just because they found it exciting and suspenseful, but because they knew anyone could win. Anyone could ship a satellite package online and parlay that into tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in a live event. Anyone could end up under those lights, popping champagne with Mike Sexton. Lots of "anyones" did, and millions were inspired to play. Without that carrot, it's well, just an empty stick. Live streaming will sate the diehards and perhaps the Main Event will always live on in some form of edited package, but I expect even more programming to die out unless online poker makes a quick, legal comeback.

On April 15, thousands of people who once had a way of supporting themselves outside the system had their way of life taken away with one stroke of Preet Bharaha's pen. When it comes to the fall of online poker in the U.S., the powers that be weren't getting their "fair share" of that juicy green pie. So they leveled the industry altogether in order to eventually weasel their way in. It won't happen in the short-term, but it will happen eventually. There may be time pressure for those clinging to the last vestiges of the industry, but there's no time pressure for them. Our money will always be there, ready for the taking the minute that tap is turned back on. Perhaps when the big banks finally start collecting all those precious transaction fees from online poker players we'll see someone in a JP Morgan Chase patch at the final table. Remember, guys. You're only allowed three. B of A gets three too, and so does Citibank.

I didn't apply for a press credential to last year's November Nine. I drove out there, saw some friends, dropped off Pauly and was back on I-15 south before cards went in the air. I didn't apply for them this year either, even though I will be in Las Vegas when someone finally holds that bracelet aloft. You're more likely instead to find me somewhere off the Strip, in a cash game or a nightly tournament, iPod in my ears and 16 oz. of steaming coffee in my cup holder, trying to grind out the rent money. After all, I do have another skill set that has thus far helped me avoid complete financial ruin. I might as well use it.

For what it was, though, the November Nine certainly had its moments. And most of them revolved around the friends, family, and fans of the players who came out to support them, often in matching specialized shirts (seriously, who doesn't love a group costume?). I'll miss their infectious energy and I'll miss the spectacle, but they'll no doubt be channelled into whatever new delivery system the Harrah's brass conjure up. A 48-hour delay? A week? Maybe I'll be around to cover it live, maybe I won't.

But I'll surely be watching the stream.

2011 November Nine photo by Jay "WhoJedi" Newnum

Occupy Oakland General Strike 11/2/11

2011-11-02T00:50:00.000-07:00

Stand in solidarity with Oakland today. Instead of watching another rerun of Keeping Up With Kim Kardashian's Divorces, take action against the banksters and corporate goons. Unless you're closing your account and moving it to a credit union, don't go to the bank. Don't hit up the ATM and eat another exorbitant transaction fee. Instead, use the powers of social media for good and spread the word. Tweet your followers. Put one of these cool posters on your Facebook wall. And if you're near a local #occupy movement, head down there and and see what its all about. Protesting isn't just for hippies and anarchists anymore, kids, despite how much the media tries to paint it that way.

If you're in the Bay Area, three rallies are scheduled for tomorrow at 9 AM, Noon, and 5 PM at 14th and Broadway in downtown Oakland as well as a 4 PM march from that location to the Port of Oakland.

For more info, hit up Tao of Fear and for ideas on how you can participate in the general strike visit Occupy Oakland.

Full Tilt Poker's New Brand Identity: Ponzi Scheme

2011-09-21T14:05:00.000-07:00

"Didn't you work for that poker ponzi scheme company?"

This was the first line of an email I received today from an old friend, a Hollywood veteran but a total civilian when it comes to poker, online gaming, and the casino industry. I don't fault him for wondering. It's a valid question, and one I'm sure to be asked again and again. He only knew about it because it was on the front page of the New York Times. And if the Times calls it a ponzi scheme, well, it must be.

"No. I freelance for the one that gave all the players their money back. I did have almost two grand in an account on the other site that I'll never see again. Gross mismanagement, yes. Pyramid-like qualities? Yes. Ponzi scheme? No."

After living with my boyfriend, an ex-Wall Streeter, for 5+ years and having my eyes opened wider to the financial world by the day, I can confidently say that Full Tilt Poker was not a ponzi scheme. Ponzi schemes do not generate revenue, as Full Tilt did for several years. No, Full Tilt fucked up in a million other ways, most notably the utterly brain-dead decision they made in late 2010 to continue crediting player accounts with deposits before actually receiving them. Not segregating player funds was another biggie. And paying out close to half a billion in dividends and continuing to send giant monthly checks to their owners even when management knew the company was insolvent does indeed take the cake. But that doesn't make it a ponzi scheme.

In this case, "ponzi scheme" is the DOJ's PR strategy. It's a sexy phrase. It's in the public consciousness. People might not know exactly what it is, but they know IT'S BAD. It's like that thing Bernie Madoff did! That greedy, rich, sick fuck. Marry "ponzi scheme" and "online gaming" and you've got a front-page story the public will lap up. You have a small group of owners who paid themselves $443 million and tens of thousands of ordinary poker players out $390 million worldwide. It plays well on the evening news. In this economic climate, any story where little guy gets fucked over while a select few make out like bandits is a mouth-watering cupcake topped with populist frosting.

That's why I'm getting emails from people who could give a fuck about online poker but know I have something to do with it.

By using this phrase in the opening salvo of their amended complaint, the Department of Justice effectively rebranded Full Tilt Poker as a ponzi scheme, regardless of whether or not that assertion is true. Much like no one will ever be able to separate Ultimate Bet or Absolute from "cheating scandal" (and that one was true), Full Tilt will inexorably be linked with those two words. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharaha made sure of that and won the PR war in the process.

Poker biz folks have spent the last 48 hours cringing at those two words. Not because they're Full Tilt sympathizers or condone the company's alleged crimes, but for the pall it is casting over an already-battered industry. The whole "this shouldn't reflect badly on everyone" argument doesn't exactly hold up when such a massive slice of the market is either under indictment or underwater. The question now is whether the industry can possibly recover from the nightmare it's facing. In other words, you thought the UB thing was bad? Get a load of this.

Full Tilt Poker will be liquidated. The DOJ made sure of that too when they released the amended complaint on the same day the Alderney Gaming Commission held its hearing on Full Tilt's suspended license. Not 24 hours after the DOJ dropped their bomb, rumors began circulating that the AGC would permanently revoke Full Tilt's gaming license. There will be no white knight. No one is going to touch this mess. Full Tilt's remaining assets-- the software itself, Rush Poker, and a bunch of office furniture in Dublin-- will all be sold off. And the inevitable civil claims against the owners' personal assets will drag through the courts for years. It won't stop until all those dollars are emptied from the owners' offshore bank accounts, and even then, it probably won't stop.

Is there a future for online poker in the U.S.? Not immediately. This Full Tilt mess just set us another two steps back. And with online poker now branded as a "ponzi scheme" in the public consciousness, politicians will be even warier about getting behind regulation and legalization. American land-based casino entities ultimately got what they wanted-- a "level playing field" (aka "no more Stars or Tilt, ever")-- but if they don't step up with some serious, SERIOUS lobbying dollars and bring the banking industry along with them, they'll never get anywhere with the feds. Online poker will never be politically popular enough to fly on its own.

Can anyone get the industry out of this mess in Washington? Well, it's certainly not the PPA. A limp-dicked lobbying operation almost wholly funded by Full Tilt and PokerStars, the PPA claimed to represent the interests of players, but in actuality, they only represented the interest of their two biggest donors. Why else would they come out against the Reid bill last December? Um, because it would put them out of business in the U.S. since they were in violation of the UIGEA? Ding ding ding! Doesn't that 15-month blackout period sound positively dreamy right about now? We'd already be nine months into it. I'd be gunning for a 2012 WSOP Main Event seat from my living room in San Francisco on Harrahs.com come spring, instead of wondering if I'll ever be able to play another hand of online poker. The PPA will forever be haunted by the specters of their former board members Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson, and the hundreds of thousands in dirty dirty Full Tilt player-owner money they took in donations over the years.

Wait wait wait... hundreds of thousands? These donkeys took almost half a billion in dividends and only spent about $1 million greasing the legislative wheels? Did they learn nothing from the real ponzi schemers on Wall Street who are almost never prosecuted? Instead the industry was left hanging like Stringer Bell in The Wire after he gave that suitcase of cash to Clay Davis. And you all know what happened to him two episodes later.

What's left of the industry is moving on without the United States. PokerStars' traffic levels have almost completely rebounded from Black Friday. Young, mobile online players of means are leaving the country, a few hundred more each week. They're setting up shop everywhere from Vancouver to Malta and shipping tournaments just like old times. They post photos of their "grind cribs" and twitter ironic things about how much more freedom they have in Mexico than the U.S. Sure there will be the inevitable downswings and visa problems and deportations, but for now, like always, they'll just grab that money while it's there. It's what we all did in the poker industry. Grabbed as much as we could before the party was shut down, hardly pausing to consider what would happen later.

Later is here, everyone. And it's not looking good. Not for Americans, anyway.

**Update**

11:50pm: OK, so the PPA didn't exactly *oppose* the Reid Bill per se. Their abysmal efforts in getting it passed just made it seem that way.

Chris Ferguson photoshop by 2+2 user chytry

Hometown Glory

2011-08-29T04:20:00.000-07:00

Thank you, Los Angeles. You've been a great audience. Don't forget to tip your waitresses.

The Long Goodbye

2011-08-22T11:59:00.000-07:00

It hasn't fully sunk in that I'm moving out of Los Angeles one week from today. On a practical level, I've certainly taken the necessary steps to prepare, spending the better part of my downtime since the end of the WSOP divesting myself of a sizable percentage of my physical possessions. 14 bags of corporately-produced clothing that I wore to slave for a corporation half a decade ago went to Goodwill. Three bankers boxes of books and DVDs are still sitting in the trunk of my car, waiting to be sold to a secondhand shop in Hollywood. Cabinets and drawers full of junk I forgot I owned have been sorted, catalogued, and (mostly) discarded. Most of my clothes are already inside a dresser in San Francisco and the winter coats and heavy sweaters I'll no doubt be donning in the upcoming weeks and months have been cleaned and pressed. I suppose it's the fact that I'm still hanging on to this apartment until the end of the year, the fact that it's still filled with furniture and appliances and art on the walls that separates me from the reality of moving. The 800 or so square feet I've called home for the last seven years will remain largely unchanged, albeit inhabited by a trusted caretaker. I'll make the 380-mile journey south come Thanksgiving to placate my parents' wishes to spend the holiday with both their daughters, and again for an unspecified amount of time around Christmas that has yet to be decided. It's a long, but necessary goodbye.

The move was met with mixed reactions from my family. My mother was sad, but ultimately understood, having moved clear across the country when she was 23 to a place she'd never been. Mandy was thrilled and can't wait to visit after her hellacious 10-week shoot in Las Vegas is complete. My father, as expected, was downright funereal in his tone and went on a negative offensive (It's cold up there! Public transportation is horrible! Everything is so expensive!). He's less dour now, but still unconvinced, and probably hoping that after the initial six months, will settle back down in Southern California, in and of itself, a highly improbable scenario. But he's my father and he loves me and I'm a lot more like him than I'd care to admit. So I get it.

Outside of my family, everyone who I was once close to in Los Angeles has moved on, or I see them so often outside of Los Angeles that our mutual home based has ceased to matter. My holy triumvirate of Showcase, Bean, and Ben are all on Eastern Daylight Time. My blogging brethren are scattered all over the world and the poker circuit limps on, although my role in that traveling circus is constantly being redefined. So there aren't too many goodbyes to be had. Los Angeles will always be my hometown, but home now is with Pauly, wherever life may take us.

I see a future without this couch and this table, without the zen blue of my bedroom walls and the dark woods of Pauly's office, without my grandmother's dining room table and the orange chair my father used to sprawl in as he studied for his law school exams more than forty years ago. It's also a future without the circular saw presently grinding away in the neighbor's yard, so there's that too. It'll be replaced by the rattling our bay windows make as the Muni whirs past and the wind through the giant ficus that stands guard outside our new home.

It's a future that is only a week away, and one I'd jump into tomorrow if I could. Anyone want to finish packing for me?

Totaled

2011-07-29T15:10:00.000-07:00

For two weeks, I had to drive through the intersection at least four times a day. Sometimes more. What used to be the windshield of my Mazda was still sprinkled across the center divider, growing more granulated by the day. It sparkled as the sun hit it in the mornings, twinkled a cruel reminder as the headlights of my rental car shone across it when I made my way home in the depths of the desert night. He hated that intersection far more than I ever would, closing his eyes to block out flashbacks of the wreck as we passed through.

Every day. At least four times a day. For two weeks. That's 56 chances to relive the horror, at a bare minimum. There's little wonder we fled Las Vegas as fast as we possibly could.

When I got the call that morning, it was him. I knew he was alive. He told me to look out the second-floor window and I'd see the scene of the accident. All I could see was an ambulance. I threw on shoes and started running. And when I got to the end of the block and made the turn north, I finally saw the car.

The entire driver's side door was punched in. Every airbag had deployed. The velocity of the oncoming car was so great the roof had buckled upward. Six windows, shattered. Mirror dangling off the side. The clearer my totaled car grew in my field of vision, the faster I ran, until at last I saw its driver walk out from behind the ambulance, looking almost completely unharmed. Sweat poured down my face and his as we finally embraced and sought out shade from the 105-degree heat. He had cuts on his arms, glass all over his clothes and some soreness that was sure to grow worse, but he was fine. The airbag saved his life. Mine too, because after ten seconds of imagining life without him, it wasn't a place I ever wanted to go back to.

The paramedics started questioning him to check for head injuries.

"Do you know what day it is?"

"I have no idea, but it's Day 1B of the World Series of Poker Main Event and I have to get to work."

"Do you know where you are?"

"Unfortunately, I'm in Las Vegas."

"Who is the President of the United States?"

"You know, that puppet Obama."

* * * * *

We'd been thinking about moving for a while. Pauly has never liked living in Los Angeles. Aside from the warm Januarys and the easy access to medicinal marijuana, there is absolutely nothing about this place he enjoys. He hates its food, its gridlock, it's vapid people and plasticine culture, its image-conciousness, and its lack of foot traffic. And after the accident, he wasn't going to be driving a car anytime soon. I don't hate it here, but its drawbacks are constantly multiplying. I've spent 85% of my life in Los Angeles and I'd like to see that figure drop. So why not get out while I can? It's not like I have a job that ties me to this place. The great thing about being a writer is that you can do it anywhere.

After Black Friday, we talked about Colorado. Our cost of living would drop dramatically and we already had a built-in network of friends in the Denver area. We started looking at Craiglist for rentals and talked to people about potential neighborhoods, and I was doing my best to remain open-minded to what would be for me, a great cultural/lifestyle shift. I mean, I'd be moving to a place where Tevas aren't just considered acceptable, but they're the norm. I'm not a hiker, a biker, a yogi, a skiier, or a boarder. My last experience living in a cold climate led to a decade-long affair with antidepressants. I know I'd enjoy being around friends and a great music scene, but could I really hack it living in Denver?

Then, like a fairy godmother, or perhaps Glinda the Good Witch, in walked Halli.

I met Halli in Vina del Mar, Chile of all places. I was on one of my first assignments covering the Latin American Poker Tour for PokerStars and she was there her best friend, Shirley Rosario. Shirley was playing the tournament and when Halli wasn't sightseeing or grinding the cash games, she was hanging out with our little media crew-- me, Otis, Chip Bitch, and Joe Giron. Back then, Halli was a cash game pro based at the Bike, but more recently she returned to San Francisco and moved back in to the sprawling Lower Pacific Heights Victorian that has bounced between herself, her brother, and various friends for years now.

When Halli came out to the WSOP and told us she was looking for someone to share her place with now that she'd ended her five-year relationship with her boyfriend, it was like a light turned on. It was almost too perfect. We'd be able to live in a place we both loved for less than what we paid in L.A. Pauly wouldn't have to drive at all. And don't even get me started on all the cool shit that is within walking distance of Halli's house-- everything from dive bars, to sensational Peruvian food, to world-class music venues like the Fillmore. Not to mention Halli herself. She lights up any room she walks into with her contagious energy... then she'll whisper vitriol in your ear about the fedora-clad hipster couple in the corner booth.

We spent the last three days up there and our new digs fit us like a glove. So, as a down payment of sorts, we walked into a mattress store on Geary and bought a bed. I teased Pauly about being in his late thirties and finally owning his first real piece of furniture. The plan right now is to stay at least six months. Maybe more. Maybe a lot more? I'll hang on to my place in L.A. through the holidays, but we'll have to make a more definitive decision about what to do with it at the beginning of next year.

* * * * *

"That looked like a new car," the paramedic said to me. He had short dreadlocks and kind eyes and tried to distract me as Pauly was treated.

"He bought it for me for my 30th birthday. I'd never had anyone buy me a present quite like that."

"It was a helluva present. It saved his life."

The back door slammed and the ambulance pulled a quick u-turn as we headed toward the freeway. A quartet of cops and tow operators still peered under the hood of my black Mazda as they prepared to haul it away. It was the last time I'd ever see it. A week later it was declared a total loss and I signed away the title in exchange for a check.

I bought another car. The same car, just a new color. And a moon roof. I was probably their easiest sale of the week, walking in off Santa Monica Boulevard and buying it just like I might a dress or a new pair of shoes. At one point, I pulled out my phone and showed the guys at the dealership the accident photos. One just could not wrap his head around the fact that Pauly hadn't even broken his arm. The other turned ghostly pale and zoomed in to get a closer view of the airbags before mumbling something about calling his wife.

Pauly loves the new ride, but is even happier about spending less time in it now that we're relocating to San Francisco. I can't say I blame him. I have great hope that this move will not only foster a better daily living environment, but be creatively fruitful for both of us. I could already feel it after only three days.

Only 31 more until a new era begins.

Impressionism

2011-07-06T18:37:00.000-07:00

When the WSOP schedule was released I was confronted with a decision-- play the Ladies' Event or travel to upstate New York to attend a three-day Phish concert. If the Ladies' Event fell on any other weekend during the WSOP, there was about an 80% chance I would have played. Despite the score I had earlier this year, it still would not have been sound bankroll (or liferoll) management to buy in to any $1,000 event directly. Of course, there were other avenues available-- single-table satellites, selling action, and even at one point pre-Black Friday, sponsorship. The more I thought about it, however, the more it turned into hardly a decision at all. Of course I was going to choose to spend Fourth of July weekend seeing my favorite band with the love of my life over a poker tournament. And, as it turned out, I couldn't have picked a better weekend to leave Las Vegas and the World Series of Poker temporarily behind.

Stand too close to an impressionist painting and it is, in the inimitable words of Alicia Silverstone in Clueless, "A big ol' mess." Move back a few feet and shapes start to form. Make it a few yards and you'll begin to see the scene for what it really is. I had to get 2,500 miles away from the Rio to do just that.

We returned just in time to witness the final table of the $50,000 Players' Championship, where Phil Hellmuth is making his third run this summer at his record 12th WSOP bracelet. Although its a little strange NOT to be live-blogging the whole thing from start-to-finish, I can't say I miss it. At this point in my journey as a writer, I have a far better perspective standing further back from this particular painting. The same goes for the Main Event, which roars to a start tomorrow. My time is far more profitably spent these days grinding out rent money in the $1-2 and $2-5 NLHE at Venetian. No amount of words I speak or write will do anything to change the dramas that constantly repeat themselves in the poker world. And for that healthy dose of perspective, I have to thank the 30,000 strangers who gathered around a racetrack this weekend in Watkins Glen, my boyfriend, who encouraged me to join them, and four guys named Trey, Mike, Page, and Fish who put on one helluva show.

Good luck to everyone chasing the dream in the Main Event. I'll see you at the tables.

Guest Post on Tao of Poker: Apocalypse Now

2011-06-05T16:10:00.001-07:00

With Pauly out of town on his first Phishing adventure of the summer, I filled in this weekend with a guest post on the Tao of Poker. Head on over and check out Apocalypse Now.

Moving back over to the featured table now, where Maria Ho is about to go heads-up with Allen Bari for the $5k NLHE bracelet. Hit up WSOP.com for chip counts and updates, because my badge is off for this one.

In Which I RISE to the Occasion

2011-06-04T15:59:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have figured it out by now, but I'll make it formal here. In addition to writing dispatches on the Tao of Poker, I'm also part of the team behind the RISE Poker blog. A partnership between Poker Royalty, RISE clothing and Zen Gaming, RISE Poker is a subscription-based online poker site that is 100% legal in U.S. America. We have a sick lineup writing and doing photography for the blog including Pauly, F-Train, Benjo, and WhoJedi. It's sort of like every superstar free agent got together to form their own ball club and I'm proud to be a part of it.

Here's a few posts I've already penned for RISE:

Phil Ivey Breaks Silence, Sues Full Tilt

2011 WSOP Day 3: $25k Heads-Up Finds its Final Four

2011 WSOP Day 4: Jake Cody Wins $25k Heads-Up, Completes Triple Crown

Phil Ivey Suing Full Tilt, Won't Play WSOP

2011-05-31T21:11:00.000-07:00

A dramabomb did detonate on the first day of the 2011 World Series of Poker. It just wasn't the one anyone expected.

For weeks, the poker community has been speculating as to which members of Team Full Tilt would show up at the WSOP and whether or not they would don the red and white patches that have become synonymous with their public personae. Although former Full Tilt president Howard Lederer did return to the United States a few days ago to attend to a personal matter (his mother's memorial service), most folks in media row believe he wouldn't dare show his face inside the Rio until a plan was in place for Full Tilt's U.S. customers to be paid out. Other Team Full Tilters, however, weren't quite as concerned about potential face-to-face confrontations at the Rio with angry players. I spotted a patchless Phil Gordon early this afternoon at the Bad Beat on Cancer booth. A few hours later I saw John Juanda in the satellite area and he was wearing a patch. The $25,000 heads-up event that began at 5 p.m. today was littered with red pros, many of them logoed up including Erick Lindgren, Patrik Antonius, Brandon Adams, Huck Seed, David Benyamine and Juanda. Lederer didn't play, of course. Neither did Chris Ferguson or Andy Bloch. But the most glaring absence was Phil Ivey. This is a man with some serious bracelet bets, not to mention a solid favorite against the field.

As Dutch blogger Remko "happyfreaked" Rinkema wrote on his Twitter account earlier today, "Biggest upset of the first day is obviously Phil Ivey not showing up. Is he out for the summer?"

Turns out, he is.

As the first round of the $25k drew to a close, Ivey posted a statement on his official Facebook page that ignited a frenzy. Although the veracity of the statement was briefly in doubt, it was quickly confirmed by the Entities at Wicked Chops Poker via a conversation with Ivey's manager. Released in six parts, here is the complete text:

For many years, I have been proud to call myself a poker player. This great sport has taken me to places I only imagined going and I have been blessed with much success. It is therefore with deep regret that I believe I am compelled to release the following statement.

I am deeply disappointed and embarrassed that Full Tilt players have not been paid money they are owed. I am equally embarrassed that as a result many players cannot compete in tournaments and have suffered economic harm.

I am not playing in the World Series of Poker as I do not believe it is fair that I compete when others cannot. I am doing everything I can to seek a solution to the problem as quickly as possible.

My name and reputation have been dragged through the mud, through the inactivity and indecision of others and on behalf of all poker players I refuse to remain silent any longer. I have electronically filed a lawsuit against Tiltware related to the unsettled player accounts. As I am sure the public can imagine, this was not an easy decision for me.

I wholeheartedly refuse to accept non-action as to repayment of players funds and I am angered that people who have supported me throughout my career have been treated so poorly.

I sincerely hope this statement will ignite those capable of resolving the problems into immediate action and would like to clarify that until a solution is reached that cements the security of all players, both US and International, I will, as I have for the last six weeks, dedicate the entirety of my time and efforts to finding a solution for those who have been wronged by the painfully slow process of repayment.

In a word, (well, actually two,) holy shit.

Ivey's page was immediately flooded with supportive statements from players and fans. It's the first official word anyone's heard regarding the payout situation from a member Team Full Tilt, who have all supposedly been muzzled by lawyers. Ivey, no doubt, has a substantial sum of his own money tied up on the site. The seven-figure-per-month dividend checks have stopped coming. So why not file a lawsuit? Not only is it a good PR move to do Bill Clinton's "I feel your pain" routine and align himself with the disgruntled U.S. players, but he's also one of the (very) few Full Tilt Pros who can actually continue to support himself in the lifestyle he's grown accustomed to by playing poker. Ivey loves the game, he'll put in the hours, and he'll take on anyone. Did Howard Lederer cart his bags of money over to Bellagio and step up to the plate in high-stakes cash games over the last couple of years? Of course not. And why would he? Lederer is smart enough to understand that at this point, he lacks any sort of edge in those lineups.

Ivey's statement, however, was not the only drama circling Team Full Tilt today. After losing his Round 1 match to David "Bakes" Baker in the $25k, 2010 WSOP-Europe Main Event champ James Bord hung out on the rail and waited for John Juanda to finish his match before confronting him with a barrage of obscenities. I believe the words "thieving prick" and "disgusting human being" were tossed around before Bord threatened to attack Juanda in the parking lot. Security intervened, and the two were physically separated.

It will be interesting in the next few days to see if similar confrontations pop up. I'm never one to condone violence, but people are angry, quite a few are broke, and after 45 days without moving even a small step closer to returning player balances, they want answers. They're mad as hell, they're not going to take it anymore, and today, Phil Ivey was effectively canonized as their patron saint. Could other Full Tilters fall in step? Yeah... somehow I doubt that. The situation, however, is reaching UB proportions and will grow worse by the day inside this building until someone from Full Tilt other than a low-level PR monkey steps up and starts communicating.

Slow news day, huh?

**Update**

11:45pm: Pauly, Benjo and I recorded a Tao of Pokerati podcast on the Ivey/Juanda drama. Check out Episode 2: Ivey suing Full Tilt and Juanda harassed.

Darkness on the Edge of Town

2011-05-30T14:52:00.000-07:00

I'm seated on a camping chair in the cement-and-gravel backyard of my seventh Las Vegas residence in six summers. It's so perfectly clear and pleasant outside I could almost weep. I hear a bird chirp and it reminds me of the dead one Pauly found next to the back wall only minutes after we arrived. I know that there's another bird carcass around the corner beyond the padlocked fence painted a shade on the lighter end of the cream-to-adobe spectrum that covers nearly every square inch of surface, man-made or not, in the Las Vegas Valley. Taking a look at our parched surroundings on the edge of town it's not difficult to figure out their cause of death.

The din of Los Angeles had been eating at my patience over the last six weeks I spent there-- the leaf blowers, circular saws, and car alarms, the bickering couple upstairs and their boundlessly energetic kitten, the can fairies pillaging the dumpster outside our bedroom window, and the relentless crush of traffic, whatever the hour. It's quiet out here, save for the goat that woke Pauly and Benjo early this morning. Apparently a few of them live in the rogue structure behind our subdivision in a fenced-off square of land. I'm enjoying the brief silence before turning my life over to the World Series of Poker for the sixth straight year less than 24 hours from now.

Although I know my frame of mind will undoubtedly change over the next few days, there's just something more zen about my outlook as I approach the Series. I'd say about 90% of that is due to the fact that I'm no longer a slave to live updates. What I will be doing at the WSOP in terms of media will reveal itself in the coming days and I will certainly be playing a lot more than I have been able to in past years. I look forward to being able to write within a different structure, one far more akin my first WSOP than the five that followed. And as usual, if you're snapped wearing a heinous outfit-- it's not slander if it's the truth!

I keep going back to a conversation I had in a bar back in Los Angeles earlier this year.

"Something big is going to happen at the WSOP this year, I can feel it," she said.

I didn't believe her at the time. The media veteran in me won out. But it was also two months before Black Friday.

I'll see you at the Rio.

Jack Tripper Stole My Dog: Available Now on Amazon

2011-05-27T08:53:00.000-07:00

What does the title mean? Read it to find out.

Who publishes two books in a year?

Pauly, that's who! I'm all at once flabbergasted, inspired, and proud of my beloved.

While Lost Vegas covered his real-life experiences over four years at the World Series of Poker, Jack Tripper Stole My Dog is (thankfully) a work of fiction. You'll understand why I said "thankfully" when you hit Chapter 5. The tale of Russian cab driver Ivan, the women in his life and the passengers he ferries around Manhattan, JTSMD also paints a portrait of New York City one year post-9/11. It's funny, it's salacious, it's offensive, it's heartfelt, and it's available now in paperback on Amazon.com. A Kindle/e-pub version is forthcoming and expected in mid-June.

Pauly and I recorded a short podcast where I spoke to him about his creative process and the aforementioned Chapter 5. You can listen to it here.

Click here to buy a copy!

WSOP Flashback: Leaving Los Angeles, 2008

2011-05-18T00:25:00.000-07:00

I was told on more than one occasion that the "jail sentence" metaphor I conjured up in this post led to my eventual sacking from a certain media outlet more than two years later (can you concieve of a more bullshit excuse?). Nevertheless, I believe it speaks honestly to what we all feel around this time each year as we prepare to bunker down for seven weeks in Las Vegas.

Desert Calling
originally posted 5/26/2008

In many ways, it's like preparing for a jail sentence. You get your affairs in order, leave sets of instructions, close up the house, give the keys to its caretaker. You say goodbye to your loved ones and warn them that you may not call a lot because the hours are messed up and one day tends to bleed into another as the sun rises and falls, rises and falls over the parched Nevada desert. You know that in a week's time words like Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday will cease to matter; only Day 1, Day 2, Day 3. You know that 2 a.m. will, at some point start to feel like 2 p.m., that meals will happen whenever there is time, and that little time at all will be spent in the scorching outdoors.

Your new home is a room the size of an airplane hangar cooled to the temperature of a refrigerator and you'll spend over 500 hours serving time in there over the next seven weeks. You've committed no crime, but you're a repeat offender. You know the consequences, you understand how punishing the grind will be. But you're still drawn there. Drawn to the lights in the desert. Drawn to the clatter of chips and the promise of fortune and the patches of darkness that lurk around every corner of the city. Year after year. Summer after summer. Three of them now.

The sun, unforgiving. The heat, persistent. Oppressive. Unfathomably dry. The valley, overflowing with identical tract houses in various states of construction or foreclosure. The roads, newer and wider the further you drive away from the highway. Mile upon mile of chain restaurants, discount superstores, anonymous office parks, and subdivision after subdivision after subdivision. The Strip, it's grimy sidewalks sizzling, overflowing with tourists from California, from St. Louis, from North Carolina, from Utah, from London from Stockholm from Melbourne. They come to escape. To gamble. To get married. To find Elvis. They come to see America. They come seeking a dream. They come seeking a quick fix. They leave and come back, leave and come back. But always come back. They always come back. I always come back.

We wonder how we got here, how any of us got here, and why, after all we know, we continue to return. On every drive through the desert I wonderwhat were those slings and arrows of fate that turned me off Wilshire Boulevard and onto this two-lane highway?

24 hours. To pack, to prepare. To plot. To brace. To sleep. To inhale those final lungfulls of ocean air and enjoy the comfort of a cool breeze.

The lights in the desert are calling. I have to answer.

A Hairy Situation

2011-05-15T23:06:00.000-07:00

Dear Juniors,

It this were any other restaurant, I probably wouldn't be writing this letter. But the fact is, I grew up around the corner from here and have been a customer since I could walk. I blew out candles on birthday cakes from your bakery. My parents used to bring home your chicken soup where I was sick. I've never, ever sent a plate back at Junior's and as my boyfriend (and dinner companion) mentioned to me, he's never seen me send a plate back at any restaurant we've patronized in the five years we've been together. Yesterday, however, while grabbing an early dinner at your establishment, I had to send my turkey burger back not once, but twice. It's pretty easy to tell when a turkey burger has been undercooked. The inside shouldn't be pink at all. And two bites in to this half-pound monster, a swath of chewy, pink, uncooked meat greeted me.

So I sent it back. My waitress was quite gracious about it and returned about five minutes later with the same patty, re-grilled, on a fresh bun. Unfortunately, although the outside was nearly blackened by now, the center was still not cooked through. So I sent it back again, and with my boyfriend now finished with his meal, I asked for the burger to be wrapped up to go. The waitress presented me with a fresh one and asked if I wanted to check it before I left. I said I trusted her. Big mistake.

When I returned home twenty minutes later and sat down at my dining table to finally eat my dinner, I found not one, but several black hairs inside the burger, which I clearly wasn't eating now, but for which I'd still paid about $20 when tax and tip are figured in.

I don't wish anything in return except for the money my boyfriend paid for the meal I was never able to eat. You also might want to look into the gentleman operating your grill around 6:00 pm on Sunday, who was apparently so offended at my criticism of his culinary skills that he decided to cover my turkey burger with hair from some unspeakable orifice.

It really does sadden me that after more than 30 years, I may never eat here again. And after reading this, I think you can understand why I've lost my appetite for Juniors.

Sincerely,

change100

P.S.-- And to the man who put hair in my burger I say this-- don't you know that shit doesn't fly anymore in the age of social media?

Media Banned from Playing WSOP Bracelet Events

2011-05-11T12:46:00.000-07:00

Via a tweet from Lee "@Chingster23" Davy it leaked out this morning that an "unwritten" WSOP rule forbids credentialed members of the media from playing WSOP bracelet events.

"Just been informed by WSOP that I cannot play in a WSOP event if I am also going to carry out Media work. Just saved myself a lot of money," he wrote.

I guess the year of the poker media is over, at least when it comes to World Series events.

I've spent the last five summers doing nothing but promote the WSOP. I've spent every June evening since 2006 grinding out live updates, and now the powers that be are telling me and everyone else who has worked their ass off on media row that their money is no longer welcome in the Amazon Room. And in such a circuitous way. When, exactly were we going to find out about this "unwritten rule" had Chingster23 not brought it to everyone's attention? Before or after we picked up our credentials three weeks from now?

Playing in a WSOP event is the highlight of the summer for many members of the poker media. It's a needed reprieve from the grind of reporting and a rare opportunity to live in the world we spend our days writing about from the sidelines. Sure, Harrah's will gladly take the media's money when they charge us $8 for a stale pizza at 1 AM, but should they want to plunk down a grand to take a shot at the dream they are really selling-- a bracelet-- that money is no longer welcome. Or, as Pauly said to me a few minutes ago, "Poker is a game of skill. They don't want you to play that. But they have no problem with you donking off your paycheck at craps or pai gow. Or in my case, they'll gladly take your sports bets."

A lot of us in the media rely on poker to supplement our income. We make barely enough to get by as it is. Even those lucky to have jobs or a few paying freelance clients have seen our paychecks shrink up significantly over the last year. Now, with online poker no longer an option for those of us living in the U.S. (as well as the foreign media working at the WSOP-- they can't play from Vegas either) we're left to make that money up in live games. I know I was planning on grinding a lot more this summer to cover my expenses. Now I'll just have to take my business across the street to the Venetian.

Oh, wait! But satellites and cash games are OK! Hold on... I can play a satellite for a WSOP event, but I can't play the event itself? What the fuck am I supposed to do with my lammers then, since selling them is technically illegal? There's another "unwritten rule" for you, or at least that's what I was told both times I was busted by security last year for doing just that-- a practice as old as WSOP satellites themselves. Why, then would I choose to give Harrah's my rake in the cash games when there are plenty of other options?

The WSOP knocked over a hornet's nest with this one. They broke the cardinal rule- don't upset people with pens or a platform. Just as I was getting excited about my annual sojurn to Vegas, that "pilgrimage" Ty Stewart so elegantly described on this morning's media conference call, I'm finding nothing but a bad taste in my mouth.

**Update**

2:42pm: Well that took only ninety minutes. See what happens when the poker media actually works together? I got a voicemail from WSOP pooh-bah Seth Palansky just a bit ago reassuring me that I'd be able to play bracelet events this summer. He followed it up with this two-part tweet from the @wsop account:

"Is it too late to say April Fools Poker Media? (j/k) I screwed up. I hear you. We'll come up with an alternative that lets u do both. Give me a day to vet, but I think there's a way to do this that is more fair. Will provide details as soon as we can, but please rest easy."

Thank you, WSOP for listening. And thank you, poker media for a quick, decisive response.

Follow the Money, Part 2: Where Online Sites Spend Lobbying Dollars

2011-04-27T10:17:00.000-07:00

I had some more fun poking around Open Secrets last night, searching out where online poker dollars landed in Washington. Again, this isn't breaking news or intended to be any sort of dramabomb-- it's all publicly available information.

Over the last two years, PokerStars spent $1.26 million on lobbying. They were the seventh-largest donor in the casino/gambling sector in 2010. #1 was Caesar's/Harrah's with $3.9 million and surprisingly, The Poker Players Alliance was #2 with $1.8m. Coming in at #3 with $1.66m was the Interactive Gaming Council, a Vancouver-based trade group representing offshore online gaming entities including PokerStars and Full Tilt.

$900,000 of PokerStars' $1.26 million went to a lobbying outfit headed by former House Majority/Minority Leader and Democratic presidential candidate Dick Gephardt. Beginning in Q3 2009, the Gephardt Group was paid $150,000 per quarter to represent PokerStars on Capitol Hill. They were no small client either; Stars' lobbying dollars represented 9.1% of their $6.59 million take in 2010, tying them for first place with Peabody Energy among the Gephardt Group's clients when it came to reported billing dollars in 2010. Despite the hefty paychecks they received over the last six quarters, the Gephardt Group has never commented publicly on their work for PokerStars, nor do they explicitly list PokerStars as a client on their company website next to their other "stand-up" clients like Goldman Sachs, United Healthcare, and the Government of Turkey. Instead, Rational Entertainment Enterprises, the name of Stars' holding company, is listed. PokerStars is also referred to as "Rational Entertainment Enterprises (on behalf of PokerStars) in the Gephardt Group's lobbying disclosure paperwork filed with the House and the Senate.

So...although Dick Gephardt doesn't mind taking PokerStars' money, he sure seems ashamed to be in business with them. For $150,000 a quarter, he should be wearing a .net patch every time he does a stand-up on CNN.

The remaining $360,000 of Stars' lobbying dollars went to the St. Louis-based law firm of Stinson, Morrison & Hecker at the rate of $60,000 per quarter. Based on the information available on OpenSecrets, PokerStars appears to be their largest client when it comes to government affairs. Of the $1.21 million they reported from clients for lobbying in 2010, Stars represented almost 30% of their receipts. Second-largest was a New Zealand-based dairy company called Fonterra. The firm's other clients primarily lie in the energy, agriculture, and oil & gas sectors. The only lobbyist listed was Jane E. Duecker. Her bio on the firm's website reveals that she is a former assistant attorney general for the State of Missouri and served as the Chief of Staff to the Governor from April 2003 to December 2004. Although it lists her work in a variety of industries, gaming is not mentioned.

PokerStars wasn't the only major online site that engaged in lobbying activities. PartyGaming spent $2,155,000 on lobbying over the last four years: $1.65 million in 2007, $170,000 in 2008, $60,000 in 2009, and $240,000 in 2010. Here's where it really gets colorful-- $1.35 million of Party's 2007 lobbying dollars went to a company called Avatar Enterprises based in Collinsville, IL. Avatar was run by Gary Frears, a man who has been in trouble with various state, municipal, and federal agencies since the early 1980s. After a stint as a fixer for the Illinois Department of Transportation, Frears worked for the Democratic Party's national finance committee before moving into his own business deals. After securing a $13.4 million from the State of Illinois to build a Holiday Inn in the city of Collinsville in 1982, Fears defaulted on the loan and never repaid it, leaving the state hanging on $31 million in outstanding principal and interest by 1995. The state ultimately sold the property at a loss in 2007. Fears moved to Florida in the mid-1990s and began investing in Indian casinos. Almost every deal was fraught with drama and ended acrimoniously.

Frears turned to lobbying in the mid-2000s, acting as the registered foreign agent for the Moroccan government in addition to his work for PartyGaming. Avatar also received a payment of $606,048 from Russel DeLeon, husband of PartyGaming founder Ruth Parasol. The IRS is also after Frears, seeking over $300,000 in income taxes dating back to 2001 from international currency transactions he made with Deutsche Bank. More information on his tangled web can be found in this article: Fears and Lobbying in Collinsville.

So, to recap--along with the (completely toothless) PPA, two of the major forces repping online poker interests on Capitol Hill over the last few years were Dick "Don't tell anyone I'm working the pro-gaming lobby" Gephardt and a notoriously shady motherfucker in trouble with the IRS.

Still like our chances for legalization/regualtion?

Black Friday Fallout

2011-04-26T12:59:00.000-07:00

It's lunchtime in Los Angeles and I'm ready to pour a cocktail since I was just able to cash out my ~~life savings~~ PokerStars account. Although perhaps I should put down the shaker until the check clears. Now that the reality of Black Friday has sunk in for me and future plans are being hastily assembled, one other stream of fallout is beginning to come to light.

I miss playing. I really do. Watching sporting events just isn't the same without six-tabling Super Turbos. I was just starting to get decent at Badugi. And opening up the Womens' Sunday tournament was really a mistake. I'd personally vowed to win that fucker at least once by the end of 2011.

Anyhow, here's a few of the things I've been reading and some info on how to get your money out of PokerStars.

PokerStars cashouts now available for Americans: We're obviously not out of the woods yet, but I let out a huge sigh of relief when I heard PokerStars was starting to process cashouts from U.S. players. I first heard about it from Kevmath, and a quick listen to the Two Plus Two podcast confirmed it. The cashout methods available to Yanks depends on the balance you have on the site. If it's $2,500 or less, you can get a paper check. $50,000 and over requires a wire transfer. With $2,500-$49,999 the only option available is something called a "direct bank transfer." You'll need to provide both your bank account number as well as the ABA routing number, which is typically found on the bottom left of your paper checks. Some folks have already reported that the DBT worked for them. Count me among them-- after a brief hiccup where I couldn't enter my entire account number the transfer finally went through. My remaining T$ and step tickets were also converted to cash at 100 cents on the dollar.

No 'mo rodeo: File this under inevitable. News started leaking today that former WSOP commissioner Jeffrey Pollack is stepping down from Professional Bull Riders, Inc. (PBR) to focus on his new role as Chairman of Annie Duke's Federated Sports & Gaming league. FS&G looks like it might be one of the few beneficiaries of the events of Black Friday, now that Full Tilt has done away with the competing Onyx Cup.

Forbes op-ed by Gary Loveman: Yup, he's the sad-faced suit telling you to seek help for your gambling problem in those commercials aka the CEO of Harrah's. He did, however, pen a pretty solid piece in Forbes today that put forth a far clearer argument for legalization and regulation than the PPA ever has. Say it with me-- tax revenue, job creation, game security, consumer protection. Sure there was a bit of underlying "Haha! We gotcha Stars and Tilt! Here we come!" bubbling beneath the surface, but did you expect anything less?

I also enjoyed Matt Matros' op-ed in the Washington Post. Looks like the two of us have similar plans for the immediate future.

dmoongirl sounds off: I'd just started reading dmoongirl's CardRunners blog a few weeks ago. She's a 26 year-old married mom of a toddler who has been an online pro for 6 years, playing $25/$50 6-max NLHE. A week ago she was comfortably supporting her family and filming interviews for the upcoming poker documentary Boom. Now she's out of a job.

Moving Forward, Not Starting Over: Shamus wrote about the Pregame.com podcast I did discussing Black Friday and mused on his own future plans.

And finally, Pauly checks in from Peru, where he penned this stunner about his spiritual journey at Machu Picchu. Check out Cusco - Ollantaytanbo - Aguas Calientes - Machu Picchu.

Follow the Money: Online Poker and Political Contributions

2011-04-23T14:13:00.000-07:00

So much money...where did it get us?

Back when I worked in the film industry, a favorite pastime among junior D-people was to play around on OpenSecrets.org, running names of producers, directors, executives, and A-list actors to see where they were spending their political dollars. In the wake of Black Friday, I pulled up the site over my morning coffee and decided to check out how much lining-of-the-pockets the American members of Team Full Tilt did over the last four years (2006-2010). Although this is nothing close to breaking news (it's all publicly available information), the results are pretty interesting.

Howard and Susie Lederer (NV): $355,635

Andrew Bloch (NV and MD): $176,992

Chris Ferguson (NV): $109,100

Phil Ivey (NV): $92,470

Erik and Ruah Seidel (NV): $91,800

Phil Gordon (NV and WA): $49,900

Jennifer and Marco Traniello (NV): $40,800

John Juanda (CA): $17,200

Erick Lindgren (NV): $12,000

Allen Cunningham: $0

Mike Matusow: $0

Tom Dwan: $0

Couldn't find anything on those last three, at least on Open Secrets. But for the nine individuals listed above them, that's a grand total of $945,897 of dirty dirty Full Tilt money over three election cycles.

I expected as much from the FTP pros with percentages. But what about the other industry big-guns/sponsored pros/guys with deep pockets? Here's a few more names I looked up:

Leon Black, Founder, Apollo Management (NY): $296,250

Barry Greenstein (CA): $76,100

Joe Sebok (CA): $51,700

Rafe Furst (CA): $50,050

Daniel Negreanu (NV): $41,200*

Doyle Brunson (NV): $40,800

Dennis Phillips (IL): $30,700

John Pappas, Executive Director, Poker Players Alliance (DC): $25,250

Tom McEvoy (NV): $18,700

Ray Bitar (CA): $17,500**

Vanessa Rousso (FL): $17,450

Annie Duke (CA): $15,000

Joe Cada (MI): $13,500

Mori Eskandani, Producer, PokerPROductions (NV): $10,400

Phil Hellmuth and Katherine Sanborn Hellmuth (CA): $10,000***

Perry Friedman (NV): $10,000

Greg Raymer (NC): $7,300

Barry Shulman (NV): $4,000

Steve Wynn (NV): $3,000

*= although he's a Canadian citizen, he has permanent U.S. residency (aka a green card)

**= yup, THAT Ray Bitar

***= two checks @ $5,000/ea. to the PPA in July/August 2009

And here's a few Hollywood names for good measure from the same three election cycles:

Alan Horn, COO, Warner Bros. Pictures (CA): $312,296

Steven Spielberg (CA): $243,650

Tom Hanks (CA): $74,700

Jerry Bruckheimer (CA): $53,400

Jeff Bewkes, CEO, Time Warner (NY): $48,900

Sumner Redstone, CEO, Viacom (CA): $33,400

Les Moonves, CEO, CBS Corp. (CA): $17,400

Oprah Winfrey (IL): $2,300

Dr. Pauly, Internet Physician (NY): $420

Jack Tripper Stole My Dog: The Trailer

2011-04-21T10:21:00.000-07:00

Pauly impresses and inspires me to no end. Less than a year after putting out his first book, he's back with another. Get ready for Jack Tripper Stole My Dog, hitting the shelves in May! Support independent writers!

Pregame.com Black Friday Podcast

2011-04-20T11:48:00.000-07:00

Happy 4/20 America! Smoke 'em if you've got 'em!

Last night I recorded an episode of Pregame.com's Today in Sports Betting with RJ Bell discussing online poker's "Black Friday" from a media perspective. Lord knows poker players love themselves some sports betting (look who I live with)and the reverse is certainly true. RJ himself plays some $5/$10 NL at Bellagio and we discussed the impact Friday's events will have on the media, online grinders, sponsored pros, and live games.

Check it out here-- TiSB: Poker Journalist Recaps the Fallout

The End of the (Poker) World as We Know It

2011-04-16T12:16:00.000-07:00

I boarded a plane in Hartford, Connecticut yesterday morning, wearing a PokerStars sweatshirt, carrying a PokerStars player bag, and having just completed a week of work at the PokerStars.net NAPT Mohegan Sun. I was looking forward to a few days off before beginning one of two weeks-long writing assignments for PokerStars and would have probably spend a significant chunk of that time off grinding up a little income on PokerStars (and Full Tilt). As I sat down in my cramped seat on the American Eagle CRJ that would fly me through a thunderstorm to Chicago, where I’d have less than half an hour to change planes due to our late departure, I checked my email and Twitter account one last time.

The world was ending. The online poker world at least.

The U.S. Department of Justice just put thousands of Americans out of work, myself included. I’ve grown accustomed to walking the razor’s edge of a freelancer’s life; I made it through the UIGEA, media downsizing, and budget cut after budget cut. Then, when my financial outlook was at its absolute bleakest, I managed to ship a live tournament and buoy myself through that particular rough patch. Now I’ll be mummified in red tape before I see a significant chunk of that money, not to mention the rest of my bankroll and everything I’ve earned since then. It’s more money than I’ve ever had in one place in my entire 33 years on this planet. And my government is not only withholding that money, but taking away the way I earn my living because they think it’s better that they make my decisions for me.

Where’s my unemployment check? Oh that’s right. I won’t get one, and neither will the thousands of people who just lost their only source of income thanks to my country’s ever-increasing nanny state. And it was so nice of them to wait for April 15, when most of us had already paid our taxes on all that dirtily procured income. As my friend Erica Schoenberg put it on Twitter in the aftermath of the announcement—“I should be able to smoke a blunt, abort a baby, marry a girl and play online poker if I want to. Quit telling me what to do with my $ or body. FU.”

Amen, sister.

Once I was on the ground in Chicago, a flurry of emails ensued between Pauly and I as I tried to see if he could transfer funds out of my Stars account from Peru, where he’s on assignment covering the LAPT Lima. No dice. Although I’m confident that Stars and Tilt will make it right for their players and we will see our account balances returned at some point, I see this taking months, if not longer. This isn’t just money I was going to live on. It's essentially my entire life savings.

After a sprint through O'Hare Airport, I made my connecting flight to Los Angeles. Strangely enough, for the first time in about six months my upgrade cleared at the gate. It seemed like a nod from the universe saying “Here you go sweetie, sorry your life is completely fucked at the moment.” I took my seat in 5A next to Joe Giron, the best photographer in poker, and we commiserated over a couple of Canadian Club and sodas. After a while, we both had to forget about it and temporarily tune out. Without in-flight wifi, we were completely cut off at 35,000 feet. We ate shrimp cocktails, chicken with pasta, and that ice cream sundae everyone envies from the economy seats. I was acutely aware that this might be the last time I'd do so on a flight paid for by PokerStars. Joe watched The Office, while I zoned out to an episode of Survivor.

The tribe has spoken.

I looked up and the Rocky Mountains were out my window. Grand, ancient, and snow-capped. Stunning. I'd been thrown off steep cliffs before and have always managed to climb back up. I couldn't see a way back up from this one, at least not toward poker and at least not in the foreseeable future. Anyway you slice it, I lose. Everyone in the industry loses, be it money, a livelihood, the freedom to do what you love or even your ability to live in the country you pledged allegiance to every morning of grammar school. Online pros are already talking about leaving for Europe, Canada, or anywhere else the Nanny States of America can’t reach them. Men and women who were able to spend more time with their families thanks to the freedom online poker provided will be dusting off resumes and entering the worst American job market in over 80 years.

But oddly enough, as those mountains turned to desert, I found a strange sense of peace. Every time I have been pushed off a cliff, I found something better. Hollywood shoved me off the seventh floor of a Wilshire Blvd. high-rise and I found the love of my life. The UIGEA cost me the job I'd barely begun with Party Poker and I ended up traveling the world several times over for other clients. One of those clients unceremoniously sacked me and it sent me down a path that led not only to my first major live score, but to me revisiting outside writing projects I'd long struggled with. I can only hope that my fall from this particular mountainside will see me finishing them.

I'm lucky enough to have a partner who saw this shitstorm coming a long time ago, and has prepared us well for it. A lot of people aren't as fortunate as we are. Life will go on, online poker will even go on someday when the industry finally figures out the right people to pay off. It doesn't matter to me anyway. I gave up on politics a long time ago. I understand who really pulls the strings in this country and it’s not the president, Congress, or anyone else who is elected to public office. It’s powerful corporate interests, and the online poker industry in the U.S. and everyone who earns a living in it is now collateral damage in the ongoing war between B&M casino entities, online operators, and the federal government.

It was winter when I left here two weeks ago. It's 88 degrees today. My boyfriend is still in Peru and I miss him terribly. And since I can't fire up a super-turbo SNG to blow off some steam, I may even go outside.

American Idol: the Good, the Bad, and the WTF?

2011-02-25T10:31:00.000-08:00

Hollywood Week has come and gone and at last, we're left with our Top 24-- 12 guys and 12 girls who will be at the mercy of the American voting public next week. On the whole, I think it's a pretty impressive crop of talent this year and thankfully devoid of the over-population of white guys with guitars that were forced on us last season (now we get white guys on piano and bass!). There's a guy with Tourettes AND Asperger's, two former maids, a lot of dudes who love to screech out high E's and a menagerie of sickly precocious 15-year olds. Here's a look at who I'll be watching...and muting... over the next few episodes:

The Good: Casey Abrams

I am loving this quirky little w00k who crawled out of the San Bernadino Mountains and thankfully found his way to Hollywood. He's a gifted musician, a creative arranger, soulful without being over-the-top, and despite the unfortunate Taylor Hicks comparisons, has a sound that I welcome on Idol. Here's his Hollywood Week solo-- "Georgia on My Mind," self-accompanied on stand-up bass.

The Good: Pia Toscano

This chick was entirely off my radar until the latter stages of Hollywood Week, but as Randy would say, she "blew it out the box" with this solo performance:

The Good: Tim Halperin

Ladies, can we say adorable? Love the soft, lilting timbre in his voice that is sure to make teenage hearts melt across America. Here's his piano-duet version of "Something in the Way She Moves" with Julie Zorilla.

The Bad: Jacob Lusk
Please pass me some of whatever Randy Jackson was smoking when he declared this the best performance in ten seasons of American Idol... and a little of what Lusk injested before this utterly spastic rendition of "God Bless the Child." This year's motto appears to be "scream your face off if you want any attention from the judges" and this "spa concierge" from Compton (huh?) takes it right to heart:

The Bad: Clint Jun Gamboa
Can he please crawl back into the Long Beach karaoke bar he came out of? The guy has a decent voice, but you can barely hear its tone over all the runs and falsetto screeching. No subtlety here, folks. AND he kicked Child Tony G (aka Jaycee Badeaux) out of his group during Hollywood Week for a finishing touch of cutthroat cattiness. Watch him mangle "Georgia on My Mind" if you dare, or are simply an aural masochist:

The WTF?: Thia Megia
I wanted to projectile vomit when rocker Jessica Cunningham was cut and this creature was let in. This disgustingly precocious 15-year old already stunk up the small screen last year on America's Got Talent and rather than allowing her teenybopper vocals to marinate and mature for another year, the judges let her in on her first try rather than giving the nod to Cunningham, who, after making the Top 40 for a second consecutive year, instead had J.Lo ruin her 25th birthday by sending her home. I hereby declare Thia Megia this year's Jasmine Trias. Which means she'll probably stick around a lot longer than we want her to. Her screamy, high school talent show treatment of "You Raise Me Up" starts at the 1:16 mark.

American Idol Discussion on Wicked Chops Podcast

2011-02-15T15:11:00.000-08:00

Grrrr. I'm a lil' tilty at the moment after having my wallet assaulted at the DFW currency exchange counter. I'm used to getting screwed when it comes to changing USD for foreign money, but this particular transaction cost me nearly 20% in juice. That's got to be a new record when it comes to my global travels for poker, and it's not exactly an expense that can be reimbursed. Vomit.

Anyhow, the Entities at Wicked Chops Poker were kind enough to invite me on this week's podcast. Along with Chops and WPT's Jeff Holsey, we delve deep into our collective favorite topic-- American Idol-- after discussing Peter Eastgate's "un-retirement" and Ashton Griffin's 70-mile prop bet. Give it a listen here.

If all goes as its supposed to, I should be touching down in Sao Paulo, Brazil in about twelve hours. It's a good thing that the PokerStars Blog team has the best local guide ever, our own Sergio Prado, a SP native who writes the Brazilian blog. Without Serge I'd be in trouble because the only words I know in Portuguese are "good morning," "beer," and "go fuck yourself."

For now I have three hours to kill in the Admirals Club, the first season of Community on my hard drive, and a free drink waiting for me at the bar.

Top 5 American Idol Season 10 Hollywood Week Hopefuls

2011-02-10T13:36:00.000-08:00

It's been an excruciating four weeks of audition episodes on American Idol and thankfully, tonight the show moves in to Hollywood Week (and the ensuing cattiness, tears, mental breakdowns, and forgotten lyrics). Before the drama kicks off, I thought I'd take a look back and share with you who I'll be watching closely during the next round. All five (well, actually six with the Gutierrez Bros.) have serious raw vocal talent and also benefitted by having their "stories" (or at least some sort of schtick) featured on the broadcast. There is plenty still to see, but these are my favorites thus far. Feel free to add your own $0.02 in the comments.

Mark Gutierrez, 28 and Aaron Gutierrez, 27
Hometown: Redlands, CA
Audition city: Los Angeles
You'll remember them because: They're the Latin Jonas Brothers.

Lauren Alaina, 15
Hometown: Rossville, GA
Audition city: Nashville
You'll remember her because: Steven Tyler called her "beyondo cute" after she sang his song "Don't Want to Miss a Thing." That and the tragic rainbow tye-dye dress.

Chris Medina, 26
Hometown: Oak Park, IL
Audition city: Milw00kie
You'll remember him because: He wheeled in his brain-damaged fiance to meet the judges.

Casey Abrams,19
Hometown: Idyllwild, CA
Audition city: Austin
You'll remember him because: He carried around a mouth-powered keyboard at auditions called a melodica.

James Durbin, 21
Hometown: Santa Cruz, CA
Audition city: San Francisco
You'll remember him because: He's the dude with Tourette's and Asperger's.

Year of the Poker Media?

2011-02-07T14:14:00.001-08:00

Our salaries may be falling and our jobs disappearing, but four of us donks-with-notebooks have managed to score life-changing money in tournament poker over the last couple of months. The latest member of the poker media to accomplish this feat is Remko "happyfreaked" Rinkema, a writer/reporter for PokerNews.nl. Early this morning, Remko finished in fourth place at the Estrellas Poker Tour-Madrid main event for a €26,100 score (about $35,500 USD). For the 99% of you who do not read Dutch, check out this hilarious Babelfish translation of PN.nl's writeup.

Remko is true to his nickname. Despite the hour or the circumstance, the guy almost always has a smile on his face and he has a few freaky tendencies (like his frequent $50 cab rides from the Rio to Naked Fish during dinner breaks at the WSOP, where he consumed copious amounts of Las Vegas' finest sushi). Consider this your invite for a victory baked lobster roll this summer, buddy!

So, to recap. In the last 51 days Kristy Arnett won a MiniFTOPS jersey, Rob "veeRob" Perelman shipped the Hearland Poker Tour-Red Rock, I won a crazy-tall trophy at the PCA Ladies Event and Remko made a televised final table and $35K. Of course we're not the first poker writers to win tournaments-- Ryan won an LAPC event in 2006, Pauly, Dan and Lana won Dream Team Poker in 2009, and Otis shipped a Ceasar's Megastack event last summer. But the confluence of events in such a short period of time does beg the question. Is it the year of the poker media?

A hearty mazel tov to Remko. Who's gonna be next?

New Tao of Pokerati - Super Bowl Wagers

2011-02-04T11:18:00.000-08:00

As close to a lock as you're gonna get this Sunday

I taped a guest spot on the quickest gambling podcast on the internet, the Tao of Pokerati. Filling in for Michalski, I sat down with Pauly to discuss my one and only Super Bowl wager.

2011 Super Bowl: Exotic Betting on the Super Bowl with Change100 (4:19) - Pauly and Change100 chat about "exotic" proposition wagering for this year's Super Bowl. And if you're looking for some easy money, then you're in luck because Change100 also shares a tip on how long it will take Christina Aguilera to sing the national anthem.

For more on our week in sports betting, check out Your Hands and Feet Are Mangos, Part 2. My beloved has so corrupted me that I just put a 20-spot on Ivy League basketball. Go Yale?

American Idol, The Rum Diaries, and How I Lit $335 On Fire

2011-02-01T11:40:00.000-08:00

I try to live my life with few regrets, but if I have one it's that Showcase and I never got our shit together and auditioned for American Idol while we were still eligible. It's not like I was a lock to make Hollywood Week or anything-- on my best day Simon Cowell would have labeled my musical theater-trained belt "too cabaret"-- but it still would have been a cool footnote in our personal histories. At the end of last season, when Crystal Bowersox lost to Lee DeWyze, I felt like I was done with the show after nine seasons as a faithful viewer, but the ensuing shake-up at the judges' table led me to come back for more. The jury is still out for me when it comes to Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez's contributions to the show since we're still in the cringingly awful audition stages of Season 10, but I will say this. Goddamn I miss Simon Cowell. These folks are just too damn soft.

I'm taping an episode of the Wicked Chops Poker podcast this afternoon where I will no doubt go into more detail about specific contestants with the Entities. So stay tuned for that.

While Pauly took last week to do nothing but drink and bet on basketball (as detailed in his epic post Your Hands and Feet are Mangos), I didn't do much else besides organize my finances (thanks to my PCA score I am now debt-free for the first time since I was 18), hack through red tape at the passport office so I can go on an assignment Brazil in two weeks, and play online poker. I stunk up the joint when it came to MTTs, but thankfully made most of those buy-ins back in cash games and SNGs. Full Tilt's Double Guarantees Week and their new Multi-Entry Tournament shtick was like handing a back of rock to a crackhead, and I hit the pipe hard over the weekend when it came to those suckers.

Yesterday, instead of firing up the laptop, I hit the road and drove out to the Commerce Casino to play in an L.A. Poker Classic prelim. I sang along to the Glee soundtrack all the way down the 10 and as Maridu messaged me yesterday, "I'm pretty sure that's a tell." The structure for the $335 Double Stack NLHE was downright amazing for a low buy-in SoCal tourney, with 10,000 in chips and blinds starting at 25/50. Unfortunately, I got caught up in a very weird hand in the second orbit that cost me a significant chunk.

The UTG player, who seemed like an online guy both in terms of his look and his bet sizing raised to 125. A guy in an Angels hat flat-called and two calling stations in middle position flatted before the action came around to me on the button. I looked down at two kings and three-bet to 700. All four players called. The flop was 9-J-Q rainbow. Ewww. UTG guy checked, Angels hat bet 2,000, and the two calling stations folded. I hated raising, I hated folding, I didn't have any sort of read on Angels hat yet, and I still had UTG guy behind me. I decided to call, and UTG guy called behind me. 9,500 in the pot now. The turn was the 9s, pairing the board and giving it a second spade. UTG guy looked like he might bet, but then decided to check, and Angels hat quickly bet 4,000. I got the hell out, UTG guy shoved and Angels hat snap-called, turning over pocket queens for the nut boat. UTG guy had K-T for the straight and busted out.

After that, I couldn't win a pot to save my life. The one time I did flop top pair with A-T, I got raised on the turn on by the tightest player at the table and let it go. Angels hat was running over the table with his massive stack and was getting smacked in the face with the deck-- he showed pocket aces, pocket kings, quads for fuck's sake. My stack steadily eroded and I ended up check-shoving a 5-3-3 flop with pocket eights only to run into Angels hat's Q-Q. With that, my $335 burst into flames and instead of heading downstairs to ignite a few more hundred dollar bills in the cash games, I decided to drive home before rush hour traffic rendered that task impossible.

Queens against eights again, how about that?

Everything All of the Time (Reprise)

2011-01-26T10:06:00.000-08:00

Last July, only a few days before the start of the 2010 WSOP Main Event, I wrote these words for a piece on the Tao of Poker called Everything All of the Time:

"The World Series of Poker is in the midst of an identity crisis. The WSOP needs to decide what it is. Is it the most prestigious festival of poker in the world? Or is it a poker fantasy camp marketed to the masses?"

I was certainly not alone with this viewpoint. I can't tell you how many players I spoke with last summer who were frustrated with the polarized schedule of event buy-ins. If you're a NLHE tournament player you essentially have two choices-- play in one of more than a dozen $1,000 and $1,500 buy-in events with field sizes ranging from 2,500-3,000 players, or play in a $5,000 buy-in event against 800 of the world's top online wizards. Should you choose the $1,500 event and chip up a bit, only to lose one medium-sized pot in the early going, you'll be under 30 big blinds by the start of Level 3. Should you choose the $5k, you'll start with a comfortable 200 big blinds, but once you look around your starting table, you'll shit yourself and suddenly feel far less at ease.

By the end of last year's Series, I concluded that there were three major issues that needed to be addressed when it came to writing the WSOP schedule for 2011. With its release on Monday, it appears that TPTB made a concerted effort to fix one of those three, but completely left the other two alone.

1. Reduce the number of $1,000 and $1,500 NLHE events in favor of more tournaments at the $2,000, $2,500 and $3,000 buy-in level. This didn't happen at all. If you want to play a $2,000-$3,000 buy-in full ring NLHE event at this year's WSOP, you have exactly one opportunity to do so, in Event #36, $2,500 NLHE. There are zero NLHE events at the $2,000 and $3,000 levels, seven with a $1,500 buy-in and five open events with a $1,000 buy-in. The only increases when it came to mid-buy in WSOP events in 2011 will be in limit and mixed game tournaments.

2. Reduce the overall number of events. This didn't happen either, although I didn't expect it to. Try telling any corporation to make less money. 58 bracelets will be awarded in Las Vegas this year, up from 57 in 2010. Commence the "value of a bracelet" discussions in 3-2-1...

3. Figure out a way to give players more manageable tournament hours. This should have happened four years ago, but I'll give credit where credit is due. The plan to play no more than ten levels a day in any given event is going to turn a lot of frowns upside-down in the hallways of the Rio. No more coming back on Day 3 with 37 players and having to play down to a winner, even if the sun sets and rises again during the process. Of course, not knowing how many days each event will actually last means that whatever media outlet ends up getting the "official" tournament reporting contract is going to have a super-fun time scheduling their reporters. Glad I don't have to do that anymore.

It makes total financial sense that the WSOP would want to funnel as many players as possible into the weekend donkaments. Poker tourists are the ones who spend the most additional dollars on Harrahs' properties in the form of rooms, food, and pit gaming. Their sheer numbers also juice up the prize pool, which in turn gives the pros a good reason to show up at the Rio at noon to gamble it up in those fish-infested waters in the hopes of either gathering a big stack early or busting before registration for the 5 pm event closes. That's what those $1k and $1.5 events are. Far more of a gamble than anything else the WSOP offers. Double up quickly or you're toast. Not a whole lot of play for your $1,500 IMO.

If you're a limit or mixed games player, you'll be in hog heaven this summer. There are plenty of events at a variety of buyins to choose from, not to mention the new $2.5K 10-game tournament which will include Badugi for the first time at the WSOP. If you're looking for a deep-stacked NLHE structure at anything less than a $5,000 buy-in, you're kind of SOL at this year's series. If you have $1,500 to spend and are willing to take a big gamble in order to have a shot at a bracelet, then you have at least a dozen opportunities to do so. And if you're a sponsored pro, nosebleed cash gamer, or trustafarian, there are 18 events with buy-ins ranging from $5,000 to $50,000 that are calling your name.

If I play a WSOP event this summer, it will most likely be the Ladies' Event via a satellite. Nothing else on this schedule shows enough value for me and my budding bankroll unless I get my limit hold'em or O8 game in serious shape by June. Again, I don't think I'm alone here. Playing tournaments is all about picking your spots, and my spot is not in a shallow-stacked $1k with a 3,000-deep field. Were there more $2k or $3k events on the schedule, I might be planning a satellite budget. Instead, should I find myself wanting to sling cards for 12 hours, I'll probably be across the street at the Venetian, where I can play three $545 events with a 240 big blind starting stack for the price of one donkament. There won't be a bracelet at the end of that rainbow, but there might be another thirty grand. Which, as I can now tell you from experience, is pretty nice.

Bahama Pauly or Why Rum Is Evil, a semi-live blog

2011-01-24T12:07:00.000-08:00

I feel responsible that my boyfriend is addicted to coconut rum and well on his way to becoming a raging alcoholic. After all, I was the one who took him to the islands and got him hooked on the sweet pink nectar that is a Bahama Mama. Pauly makes them just as well as any Atlantis bartender after practicing relentlessly in our kitchen this weekend as the NFL's "final four" played out. Pauly's friend Chicago Bob joined us for the games, watching in agony as his Bears fell to the Packers in the first half of the afternoon. As the Jets-Steelers game approached, Pauly's Bahama Mama consumption soared to new heights, coating his usual hair-pulling and pacing act in a thick layer of high fructose corn syrup and Malibu Rum.

Sunday's highlights:

11:31am: First Bahama Mama is mixed. Shaken, not stirred. Mine is half-strength since I'm grinding Sunday tourneys.

12:24pm: Pauly babbles about how he decided to bet Green Bay because he heard about some multi-million dollar bets on the Packers that were just placed at a Central American sportsbook.

12:30pm: Kickoff in the Bears-Packers game. Bob arrives bearing an entire french apple pie.

1:05pm: I'm already out of three tourneys after running into three sets. It was bound to happen. So I buy into two more.

1:35pm: Jay Cutler gets sacked. Pauly says it's because he has sand in his vag.

2:15 pm: Pauly is on his third B.M. "If we survive the apocalypse, I'll gladly start a sportsbook with you in Costa Rica," he says as Chicago Bob anguishes over the Bears offense.

2:45pm: Some dude none of us has ever heard of is now playing QB for the Bears. Chicago Bob says "We're done."

3:16pm: Out of the Stars $11 rebuy. KK falls to AA. The lesson here is that a four-betting Brazilian always has it. I was taught that lesson last week, but I obviously didn't learn.

3:40pm: Kickoff in the Jets-Steelers game. Pauly is on his sixth Bahama Mama.

4:00pm: Pauly is swaying.

4:20pm: Smoke break. Holy Grail OG. Was grown by a priest and that's no lie.

4:30pm: Jets lay an egg in the first quarter. Why did I become a Jets fan again?

5:07pm: @TexDolly tweets "yep, i've got the Jets…early bed time tonight."

5:15pm: Pauly decides to invade the Ivory Coast. Mumbles something about a power vacuum and needing a cop car to corner the cocoa market. "Once we have the military's cooperation, the cocoa fields are ours!"

5:17pm: Pauly tells Chicago Bob they are buying more cocoa futures in the morning. Surprisingly, Bob does not disagree.

5:20pm: Discussion of cocoa futures reverts back to their plan to manipulate the mortgage market.

5:39pm: Fuckin' A. Out of the $18K Super Stack and the Double Deuce just short of the money in both.

6:05pm: First incidence of Pauly walking outside because he can't handle the pressure.

6:08pm: Pauly walks back inside and immediately bangs into a chair.

6:15pm: With pineapple juice supplies running low, Pauly turn to Newman's lemonade and invents "The Cromartie."

6:29pm:More mortgage fraud discussion. Chicago Bob: "If you're a fruit picker making $14,000 a year and you're kicked out of your $700,000 house after putting no money down, you didn't lose ANYTHING!"

6:41pm: Pauly begins banging his head against a closet door.

6:50pm: The Jets lose. Rapelesberger & Co. advance to the Super Bowl. So this is what it's like to be a Jets fan. Pauly owes Mean Gene a 4x4 and a chocolate shake from In & Out Burger payable at the 2011 WSOP.

7:00 pm: Chicago Bob departs. He leaves behind the entire french apple pie which Pauly instantly dubs "breakfast."

7:21pm: Pauly and I begin discussing what to eat for dinner.

7:25pm: "I don't want to go to In-N-Out Burger. I don't want to sit in the car because the way you drive I might puke."

7:26pm: Pauly decides to speak in a British accent while giving me his order for the local pita joint.

7:40pm: "Oh, THAT'S why I'm wasted. I've only had rum, pineapple juice, and cheese sauce all day!"

7:41pm: Me: You only drink to kill your feelings. Him: Well, I'd better drink more then!

8:15pm: I return to the apartment with our food. Pauly inhales a garlic chicken panini but only makes it halfway through his chicken kebab wrap. We both note the exceptionally phallic shape of said wrap.

8:30pm: Pauly passes out sitting up on the couch while watching a documentary about Nazis narrated by Rob Lowe.

8:45pm: He suddenly wakes, demanding a glass of water, two Motrin, and the remainder of his "penis sandwich" before passing out 30 seconds later.

9:28pm: I conclude that Pauly is out for the night and store his leftover sandwich in the fridge before turning down the bed for him.

9:31pm: "I can't believe you're 86ing me from the living room!" he slurs, followed by "Get me Motrin!"

9:33pm: First snores emanate from bedroom. Awesome. Now I can watch Teen Mom 2.

Beyond Fairy Tale: The 2011 PCA Ladies Event, Part 2

2011-01-19T12:11:00.000-08:00

"So, what do we call you?"

Here it was, the only thing I'd been dreading. Make no mistake, there was absolutely no downside to making Day 2, but I knew that if I made the final table I'd have to pull back the curtain on my identity, use my real name and allow myself to be photographed. For 5 1/2 years I had successfully confused the public, my readers, and many inside the poker industry itself with my relentless pursuit of anonymity. I wrote under at least three pen names. And in the age of Twitpics, YouTube and Facebook, I kept my picture off the internet. Initially, I chose that path because I was a Hollywood development executive writing a poker blog. When that part of my life ended and I started traveling internationally for poker, I decided it was just as well to keep it up, even if only for safety's sake. Were there other more deep-seated emotional reasons as well? Probably, but I'll save that for my shrink.

Mad Harper, one of PokerStars' media directors, was standing in front of me with a notepad. I've worked different events and drank in hotel bars with Mad in half a dozen countries and she knows the lengths I've gone to stay under the radar. I bit the bullet and told her that once I made the money, it was OK to let the cat out of the bag.

Once I made the money. Not if I made the money. In that moment, I was floored by my own confidence. Having the chip lead certainly helped.

My plan for the first couple of levels back was basically to not do anything stupid. After the overnight redraw I had position on a couple of short stacks and took advantage of it, stealing some blinds and making a couple of successful preflop three-bets. I had chipped up to nearly 150,000 and was in the big blind when the action folded around to Veronica Dabul on the button. With the blinds at 1,000/2,000, she had about 35,000 behind and opened for 5,000. I looked down at Ad-Qd and made it 15,000, half her remaining stack. Veronica tanked for about a minute before shoving and I quickly called to see her Kd-8d. An eight hit the flop, and Veronica doubled up, but she busted out a short time later in 11th place.

I made the nine-handed final table with somewhere in the neighborhood of 130-135k. I knew I had lost the chiplead, which was now held by Ricki Lake with more than 200,000. Blinds were at 1,200/2,400 and the woman directly to my left had less than ten big blinds. We were right on the money bubble, ninth place leaving with nothing while eighth would take home just over $3,700. Less than an orbit in, a huge hand unfolded between Lauren Kling, who also had about 130,000 and Ricki. Lauren opened from under-the-gun and the action folded around to Ricki, who called on the button. The flop was 9-6-3 with two spades. Lauren led out, Ricki raised, Lauren four-bet, and Ricki moved all-in, having Lauren covered. Lauren looked positively tortured, but she said "I have to call," pushing her large-denomination chips across the line.

Lauren tabled 6-9 for top two pair while Ricki sheepishly turned over 8c-8d. Although Ricki picked up a straight draw on the turn, Lauren's hand held and she rocketed into the chip lead with more than 360,000. Ricki was left with about 70k.

After the dust settled from that hand, a discussion broke out about doing a save for the bubble girl, each of the eight players in the money contributing $100. We hadn't voted yet when Little Kristen opened for 4,800 from early position and I looked down at pocket aces. I three-bet to 13,500, and it folded around to High Heels Poker Tour founder Lauren Failla in the big blind. She moved all-in, Little Kristen moved all-in behind her, and I called, having them both covered.

Me: As-Ah

Little Kristen: Ks-Kc

Lauren F.: Jh-Jd

I'm only a 2-1 favorite in this situation, but my hand held up, the board running out all small cards. Lauren F. had Little Kristen covered so she ended up with 8th place money, while the tough, tiny Canadian bubbled. She was so gracious in her exit and we almost immediately voted to do the save anyway. Not all of us had cash on us, so Vicky Coren put up the bucks and we'd all pay her back. Watch that ever happen in an open event.

"Hey Pauly, you got a hundo?" I shouted.

"Not anymore. I've just been to the sportsbook."

True story there. My beloved was sweating the Steelers-Ravens game on the big screen at the back of the tournament room as much as he was sweating me.

I could not get my hands to stop shaking. I was dropping my chips everywhere and knocking over stacks of them. It took me almost an entire orbit to get everything cleaned up and counted. Lauren Kling and I were roughly even at 350k apiece while the rest of the field had stacks ranging from 20k-90k. It was the first time I allowed myself to see at least five figures at the end of the tunnel for me.

We went down from seven to four rather quickly. Short-stacked Kathy Jamison went out in seventh after fearing for her tournament life on the bubble with nine big blinds. Ricki Lake took out Deb Qualley in sixth in a very strange hand where Ricki moved all-in on a 9-high flop holding K-J and Deb called with Q-T. Ricki departed in fifth place a short time later leaving an all-blonde final four-- myself, Lauren Kling, Vicky Coren, and Viktoria Lucenkova.

Blonde power

Four-handed play went on for quite a while. Lauren and I had about 75% of the chips in play between us while the two Victorias were both under 20 big blinds. Lauren ended up taking out Russian Vicky while I eliminated British Vicky with pocket nines against As-5s.

I had Lauren slightly outchipped going in to heads-up play. We took a quick break before getting started. I was already guaranteed more than $18,000 and as I looked in the ladies' room mirror, I told myself that whatever happened, I was already ecstatic about my result. Lauren is one of the most successful (and marketable) up-and-coming female pros on the circuit. She's shipped tourneys for six figures and has already made nearly $1 million in combined live and online earnings. It wouldn't be a tragedy to lose to Lauren, and I imagined that the title meant more to her than the cash.

Almost everything about heads-up play was a blur. Someone told me later that a pack of guys behind me were continually screaming at each other about prop bets regarding water slide races. (Pauly and Jen Shahade eventually determined that if you're going to bet, bet on the right-hand slide). I was so far in the zone that I didn't hear them at all. I was able to pull out to a significant chip lead after one monster hand where I value-towned a set and Lauren folded the river. My strategy at that point was just to chip away at her stack and avoid doubling her back up to something more workable. I could tell she was frustrated and card-dead and I was raising just about 100% of my buttons. Once Lauren was down to about 20 big blinds, she started re-shoving over those button raises, but the poker gods were shining on me and we didn't go through too much of that before I picked up Qs-Qd. With the blinds at 3,000/6,000 I raised on the button to my standard 13,000 and Lauren moved all-in. I snap-called and she tabled pocket eights. Everyone sweating swarmed to the edge of the rail and craned their necks as the board came out. I couldn't tell you what it was, all I know is that there was no eight and no straight cards. My hands flew to my face just as they did when I shipped the satellite win and I struggled not to burst into tears right then and there.

I immediately rounded the table and shook Lauren's hand, telling her how much I genuinely respect her game. It was when I finally found Pauly on the rail and melted into his arms as he whispered in my ear how proud he was of me that I finally lost it and let the tears flow. I looked around and saw the faces of so many friends. Otis. Jess Welman. Jen Shahade and her boyfriend Daniel. Many of the gang from the PokerStars Blog and some of my former colleagues from PokerNews. And Gloria Balding in an adorable red dress holding a microphone. Holy shit. I had to give an interview and take a winners photo! I did my best to stop my eye makeup from rolling down my face, thanked myself for packing a lip gloss in my purse, and posed with my pocket queens for my first-ever authorized photo on the internet.

Showcase told me he'd never seen me so happy as I was in my interview with Gloria. And in the short-term, he's probably right. Poker, both the game itself and the industry surrounding it, had beat me down over the last couple of years. The further I progressed as a writer and member of the media, the more income I lost over cutbacks, layoffs, and frankly, stupid petty bullshit. And the more income I lost, the less I could actually play poker, for fear of losing next month's rent or credit card payments.

It was only when I was shoved off the cliff and hanging for dear life by a fingernail that I found the internal fortitude to finally say "fuck you, I'm not going to let anyone make me feel this way anymore." I sat up and started coming back to life. It really is true that once you turn your head around, your poker game will turn around right along with it. I can already feel that this win is a huge springboard for me into a new era. I'm not only back from the brink of financial ruin, I'm infused with the confidence I probably always should have had.

There's no more living behind a nickname anymore. You know who I am. Now it's time to make good on my promises.

Oh and Bank of America? Fuck off.

*****

This story actually has a pretty hilarious epilogue. You see that trophy sitting next to me? Big-ass trophy, right? Well, a trio of online guys cooked up a prop bet that involved stealing it from the tournament room late on Day 1. They took it to the PokerStars party and then back to their room where they posed for pictures with it and posted them on 2+2. I'll just cut to the best part:

At around 4AM, after we got back from Aura and were hanging out in my room, security knocked on the door and simply said "I am here to collect the trophy you have in dis room."

So the head of Atlantis Security, Simien something, takes the trophy and is about to leave without saying another word, when he turns around and says "Why you take da ting that is not yars? This is a womun's trophy, are you a womun?" He goes on to lecture us for 2-3 minutes about why what we did was inappropriate, writes down my name on a notepad and leaves.

For the record, I thought it was kind of comedy gold. Juvenile of course, but undeniably funny. I'm just glad it was recovered. It's now on a truck somewhere in the greater Miami area, bound for the Bicycle Casino if you guys want to try and hijack it again. There was no way TSA wasn't going to classify that thing as a weapon.

Four blondes photo by Matt Waldron. Winners photo courtesy of PokerStarsBlog.com.

Beyond Fairy Tale: The 2011 PCA Ladies Event, Part 1

2011-01-18T12:56:00.000-08:00

"This is beyond fairy tale... it's inconceivable!" - Norman Chad

This whole journey started with a strange feeling. I don't get them often, but if I've learned anything from history, it's that when I do, I need to listen to my better angels. I'm not religious, psychic, or otherwise gifted with ESP. I'm a bankroll nit and after getting sacked from my full-time writing job in October, I'm among the 20-or-so percent of Americans that are currently underemployed. Less than a week ago, I was wondering how I would make it three more months without finding a new source of income. To put it lightly, I probably had no business even playing satellites for the $1,100 buy-in Ladies Event at the 2011 PokerStars Carribbean Adventure. But sometimes I do find myself believing in destiny.

Off an $81 satellite investment, I found myself touching down at Nassau airport last Wednesday evening, my hand clutching Pauly's as our too-small-for-my-tastes aircraft shuddered to a stop. 36 hours later, I was sitting behind my 10,000-chip starting stack in a 96-player field that included pros Kathy Liebert, Vicky Coren, Veronica Dabul, Maria "maridu" Mayrinck, Lauren Kling, Olympic gold medalist Fatima Moreira De Melo, actress and talk show host Ricki Lake, and author/chess champion Jennifer Shahade, whom I'd finally met the night before after being a fan of her writing for some time. I was also so pleasantly surprised when I ran into Pauly's little step-sister Mo, aka @DiscoSisII. I had no idea she was going to be at the PCA, let alone play in this event and I was thrilled to finally meet her face-to-face.

At my starting table were two other women I'd never met but had wanted to for some time-- Maryann Morrison, the editor of Woman Poker Player, and Alexis Gilbard, who worked behind the camera on the first season of the PokerStars.net Big Game and now freelances for Fox Sports. Alexis is a fellow Angeleno, and as it turns out, we live ridiculously close to one another. She is also an aggressive, thinking player and sat two to my right for nearly all of Day 1. I had to make a big laydown to her on the turn in an early hand where my A-T flopped top pair on a pretty wet board. Between that hand, and a two pair over two pair hand I lost to Maryann, I was down to 50% of my starting stack by the end of the first two levels. It wasn't ideal, but I didn't let myself worry about it too much because the structure was excellent and I still had over 50 big blinds.

I got back to a little better than my starting stack after doubling through Alexis. She had been playing very aggressively, opening more than a third of her hands and since I'd made that earlier laydown, I was actually trying to stay out of her way. With about 24,000 behind, she opened from middle position, I three-bet with two black kings in the cutoff, and she made the call. The flop was J-9-baby, all spades, giving me an overpair and the second-nut flush draw. She checked, I c-bet about 60% pot and she moved all-in, having me well-covered as I started the hand with a little less than 6,000. I called pretty quickly and she showed As-9h for middle pair and the nut flush draw, putting us in a 51/49 flip going into the turn. I dodged her 13 outs twice and was back up to a far more comfortable 11,500.

Just as I was getting ready to relax a little, Lauren Kling was moved to my direct left. She's a lovely woman with a badass collection of Chanel purses, but there were maybe 93 other players in the field I'd have rather had in that seat. She's aggressive, aware, and has probably played hundreds of $1k tournaments in her career while I can count mine on one hand. Lauren had already chipped up to 45,000, which at that point was about triple the average stack. As much as I didn't want to get involved with her right away (and out of position to boot), well, I did.

With the blinds at 100/200/25, the action folded to me in the small blind. I opened for 525 with Jh-Th and Lauren called. The flop was K-Q-x with one heart. I c-bet 850 with my open-ender and she called. At that point I'm giving her credit for a queen at minimum. The turn, however, was another small heart, giving me a flush draw to go with my straight draw. I decided to check with the intention of calling anything other than a weird overbet and she bet 1,800 into the 3,000 pot. I called and bingo-bongo-bango the river was another heart. I was fairly certain that my flush was the best hand at that point but (a) would really really hate getting raised if I bet out and (b) would really really hate having her fold if I bet out. I thought there was a very good chance she'd bet again if I checked, so I did and she made it 3,700. I called and Lauren wasn't pleased at all to see my hand.

"I had you on the flop and the turn!" she said with a sigh.

I was up to 21,000 after that pot and hovered right around that amount seemingly forever. Card dead at an increasingly aggressive table, I pretty much tread water and got away with one three-bet against Alexis that got her to fold pre-flop. I was getting a little frustrated and bored, until a hand came up that nearly stopped my heart. We'd just come back from break and the blinds were up to 150/300/25 when I found my first pair of aces. I opened from middle position for 750 and Stacey Sullivan, a Foxwoods regular and one of the tougher players at the table, called from the big blind. The flop was Q-T-7 with two clubs. Stacey checked, I c-bet, and she came in with a check-raise. I put her on a top pair hand like A-Q or K-Q or a strong draw and there is certainly a good case for reraising right there given my equity against those hands, but I had a very tight image at that point and thought I might prematurely blast her out of the pot. I sold it a little before making the call. I instantly regretted my decision when another queen came on the turn. God I hated it. She led out for a bit more than half the pot and I called. The river, however, changed everything. It was another queen, making it much more unlikely she had one in her hand. Now, aside from the flush and straight draws that didn't get there, I had her on a very narrow range of pocket pairs that could potentially call a shove-- K-K, J-J, T-T, or even the other two aces. If she had quads, well God bless her. Stacey checked and I moved all-in for my last 6,700. When she didn't snap-call, I knew I was fine and focused on remaining as calm and still as possible while she thought through her decision. After close to five minutes in the tank, she folded.

Shortly after we tangled in that hand, Stacey asked me for my screen name. It turned out that she had read my blog shortly before departing for the PCA.

"Oh man, sorry about your cat," she said.

I hit the dinner break with 41 players remaining and a bit better than the average stack. Pauly and I went over to the PokerStars party and I downed some pork tenderloin, caesar salad, and tortellini with pesto sauce along with one Bahama Mama (a tasty pink rum concoction) to settle my nerves. My friend Ryan always tells people not to forget to eat during tournaments and I'd done just that. Aside from the 16 oz. Jamba Juice I'd started the morning with, I'd been operating on pure adrenaline.

My table broke shortly after we returned from dinner and my new seat found me two to the left of one of my favorite people on tour, Maria "maridu" Mayrinck. I still had to contend with Alexis as well, along with Megan Milburn, who recently made a runner-up finish in the Ladies' Event at EPT London. Megan was on my left and a tiny dark-haired slip of a girl named Kristen was on my right. All four were strong players. After a bad run where my stack dipped as low as 10,000, I chipped back up to 59,000 after knocking out a short stack with A-A vs. A-2 and eliminating Alexis with Q-Q. Then came the hand that changed everything.

Maridu was a bit frustrated after enduring a nasty beat where she got it all in with a set of eights and her opponent runner-runnered a flush. I also knew she had a 1:20 pm flight the next day that she really wanted to be on. With the action folded to her on the button, she made a standard opening raise and I looked down at Ah-Kh in the big blind. I three-bet and Maridu didn't waste much time before moving all-in. Our stacks looked pretty close. I eyeballed her chips and counted her down at 47,000. I had just short of 60,000 to start the hand. If I called and lost, I'd still have a reshove stack. If I called and won, I'd be the chip leader with 20 players remaining. If I folded, I'd be below average and seriously sweating the money bubble. She did want to catch that flight.

I called.

She turned over pocket kings.

I wanted to puke.

The flop was ten-high with one heart. The dealer burned and turned, flipping over the 5h, giving me a ray of hope with a flush draw. An ace or a heart on the river would win it for me. I closed my eyes as he burned again and picked up the river card. I couldn't watch. The screams cued me to open my eyes.

It was another heart. OMFG.

As the dealer counted down our stacks, I realized that I'd completely miscalculated Maridu's. She had 57,000, not 47,000 and had I called and lost I would have been left with two big blinds rather than 12. Suddenly I was the chip leader with about 120,000. Holy. Mother. Of. God.

I bagged up 102,700 at the end of the night, which was still good for the chip lead. 16 players were left, eight would be paid. I was just happy to be alive. Among the Day 1 survivors were Veronica Dabul, Vicky Coren, Ricki Lake, Megan, Little Kristen, Foxwoods Stacey, Lauren, and Mo (yay!). The rest of the evening was spent in the Coral Bar with Pauly, Otis, and a slew of poker media friends. The pride on their faces was already better than a min-cash. I allowed myself one more Bahama Mama before popping a Xanax and drifting off to sleep.

There was still work to be done.

(To be continued...)

It Wasn't a Dream

2011-01-16T12:05:00.001-08:00

I'm still in shock and for someone who has worried about money every day of her adult life, it's a strange feeling to have a little extra in the bank. The trophy is pretty sweet too; it's the first and only one I've ever won!

As anyone who has been to PCA knows, the internet at Atlantis is super-slow/unreliable but I just wanted to give huge thanks to everyone who sweated my run, both virtually and physically. Your comments, tweets, and emails meant so much and lifted my spirits at every turn. I also want to send a special thanks to my friends in the poker media who were railing yesterday-- the win was that much sweeter with all of you there.

Once I'm back on U.S. soil, I'll post a full recap.

Ladies, please shuffle up and deal

2011-01-14T08:50:00.000-08:00

I woke up the last two mornings with the ocean right out my window. If I stare straight ahead at it for long enough, I can almost tune out the coral-pink buildings in my peripheral vision and the sound of Top 40 tunes playing at the pool four stories below. Welcome to Atlantis Paradise Island, or as I've been calling it "Vegas by the sea."

I'm short on time this morning as I pour coffee and Jamba Juice down my throat and attempt to do a decent makeup and hair job. The PCA Ladies Event begins this afternoon and thanks to my lucky satellite win on the day after Christmas, I'll be sitting behind a chip stack in about two hours' time. I met some of my fellow qualifiers last night at the ladies' cocktail reception including the lovely Jennifer Shahade, an author and chess champion who is now making her way in the poker world. I was also introduced to my new favorite cocktail, a pink creation called a Bahama Mama (Pauly had a few as well, to incessant teasing and cries of "do you want a tampon with that?") I'm truly excited to play a big buy-in event again and the jitters that have haunted me in the past are strangely nowhere to be found this morning. I'm freerolling just being here and ready to play my best game.

Unfortunately, the internets at Atlantis make the connections I've dealt with in South American hotels seem downright speedy and the international roaming charges I've already acquired on my cell phone are enough to make you faint, so it'll be a little difficult to send frequent Twitter updates. Hopefully some of my friends in the media will let me hijack one of their laptops on a break so I can let you all know how I'm doing.

Now, to apply a little mascara, hopefully without getting it all over my face.

A Eulogy for Willie (1996-2011)

2011-01-08T00:30:00.000-08:00

WTF, dude...get me out of this retarded hat

My heart was already in my throat as I picked up the phone. My father goes to bed every night at 8:30. Seeing his number on the screen at 10:05 could only mean something was drastically wrong. I was relieved to hear that nothing had happened to my mom (last phone call like this she'd had a heart attack), but a wave of melancholy came over me as my dad explained to me that he was at the animal hospital with our 14 year-old family cat Willie.

I noticed a huge change in her when I was at their house for Christmas and had a feeling that this holiday would be her last. Her typical demeanor, at least when I came around, ranged from indifference to mild hostility but this time she made the effort to brush against my leg or sit on my lap and allow me to scratch behind her ears. She knew she wasn't long for this earth and took her opportunity to say goodbye then and there.

The vets told my parents that Willie was suffering from advanced lung cancer and rather than put her through the pain of chemotherapy that might not even help her, they decided it was best that we put her down. Mandy and I rushed over to the westside from our respective apartments in order to see her one last time. She took her last breaths in Mandy's arms as my mom stroked her head. We caravanned home and Mandy and I helped my father bury her in our backyard by flashlight. Willie had a proper Catholic funeral, my mom sprinkling holy water on the tiny cardboard casket as Mandy flashed me a look that said "they have holy water in the house?" A small statue of St. Francis of Assisi watches over her grave.

Willie had a long, full, even luxurious life clawing my mother's furniture, stalking critters in our backyard, and relaxing in the Southern California sun, squinting her green eyes at anyone who dared disrupt her reverie. I'm so thankful for the years we had with her and for the happiness she brought all of us, especially my parents. She's free of her pain now, and chasing birds with the angels.

Rest in peace, sweet girl. We miss you already.

Willie stalks her prey, spring 2008

A Not-So-Thinly Veiled Brag

2010-12-27T10:28:00.000-08:00

Over the last four years I've asked the question in tournament rooms around the globe more times than you can count.

"So how did you win your seat?"

I've met guys that turned a few hundred frequent player points into a trip to the World Series of Poker. A young Brazilian woman who parlayed a satellite entry into more than $50,000 on the LAPT, enabling her to take far better care of her family than she did on her $8/hr job. 18 year-olds who shipped more than 100 WSOP Main Event seats three years before they were legally allowed to play. I always admired their chutzpah, their tenacity, their ability to perform capital miracles as they turned virtual water into wine. But I was firmly rooted in practicality. Earning a paycheck. Chipping away at those credit card bills that hung off my shoulders like sandbags. Such follies were admirable, but not for me.

Although the underemployment I've experienced for the last three months has certainly had a few ill effects on my psyche, it has yielded two positive byproducts-- I've turned out more screenplay pages in the last two months than I did probably in all of 2009 and 2010 and I've actually built myself a workable poker bankroll. For the former I owe a lot to regular kicks in the ass from Pauly and for the latter, I have to give due credit to CardRunners. Taking the time to watch just a few videos a week really took my game out of the muck and went a long way toward helping me ship this:

Sidelined from the WPBT festivities a few weeks ago with a back sprain, I got the idea to play for a PCA Ladies' Event seat while crocked to the gills on generic vicodin. I won my way into the $215 satellite via an $11 rebuy MTT and ended up busting out in 13th place out of forty-something players. I couldn't tell you a hand I played but damn, what a soft field. I decided to make another go of it this weekend but it took a few tries to win that $215 buy-in. I finished 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th (cash each time but no ticket!) in four different $2.20 rebuys before locking up a ticket in the penultimate $11R turbo sat Sunday morning. All that satellite grinding ended up having a +EV effect, however. A lot of the same crowd played those Round 1 sats and many women I'd played with in them ended up in the $215 on Sunday afternoon, so my HUD stats were overflowing on several players at my table.

The most difficult adjustment for me to make was finding ways to combat all the calling stations. There was more pre-flop limping that I was used to, and a good percentage of the time those limpers would call isolation raises, resulting in a lot of bloated pots pre-flop. In this situation, raising the limpers worked great for straight-up value, but it wasn't a move that would get anyone to fold. Neither did three-betting, except in the very late stages of the satellite. Consequently, I ended up playing much tighter than I ordinarily would. My hands held when I got it in good (QQ vs. 99, AK vs. AJ, AQ vs. A6), I won two key flips at the final table, and made one massive suckout (TT four-flushing against KK and 66) to end up chipleader with four players remaining and two packages up for grabs.

With the blinds up to 600/1,200, I had 80,000, and my three opponents had 33k, 32k and 10k respectively. I couldn't exactly fold to a seat, but the pressure came off a bit and I let the smaller stacks cannibalize each other for a while. However, I ended up doubling the short stack when her fives held against my [Qc][Tc] in a blind vs. blind hand. Now two of us had about 53k apiece and the other two both hovered around 20k.

Don't blow it, don't blow it, don't blow it. Just one hand at a time. One hand at a time.

The other big stack, OCQueenie, took out one of the short stacks when her AJ flopped an ace against pocket deuces. She was back up to 80k, I had blinded down to about 40k, and the other short stack had chipped up to 30k. I was starting to get concerned again, but thankfully the two of them took care of the final hand for me. OCQueenie's pocket tens held up against roxieforu05's pocket threes and the "Congratulations" message flickered onscreen.

My hands flew to my face. Was this really happening? Stuff like this doesn't happen to me in poker. I'm more likely to be on the receiving end of some devastating bubble. And devastating this bubble was. At 52 players, the prize pool was only $40 short of awarding one more package, making roxieforu05's third-place finish even more heartbreaking.

I dialed Pauly within 5 seconds of winning, my hands shaking so hard the phone tapped against my beaded earrings as I held it up. The only thing that would have made this win sweeter would have been if he was here with me. I let him know how deep I'd made it when we were down to five players and he was there on the rail for the big finish.

This is the largest amount I've won playing poker in some time. I almost forgot how good a big win feels, it had been so long. Although by the third or fourth go the satellites had become somewhat of a masochistic exercise, I kept plugging away because I felt I had an edge on the field. That, and even with all my time in the poker industry, I'd never experienced the Bahamas in January.

It took several bowls of Blackberry Kush and two double Baileys on the rocks to get me to stop shaking. For so long I've been writing about people who win their way in to these events, scribbling things like "Seat via $33 rebuy" in a notebook before scurrying back to my laptop to report a hand. Finally, I'm one of them. It took a few tries, but dare I say that win or lose at Atlantis, it was worth the grind to prove I could do it.

Old Roles

2010-12-24T00:01:00.000-08:00

I've never been an overly Christmassy person. I put up a tree, but that's where the decorating starts and ends. Like any kid I enjoyed getting presents (especially the lottery tickets my mom puts in my stocking to this day) but hated going to church and the foursome of my parents, Mandy and I was usually rounded out by my grandmother, the odd relative, and a couple of my mother's single friends who would spend the holiday at our house. As years went by people passed away, people moved away, people had all sorts of drama, and gradually Christmas dinner was reduced back to that core quartet. Me, Mandy, Mom, and Dad.

I'm 33 and Mandy is 30. The other cousins in our generation are 32, 28, 26 and 25. None of the six of us are married (although 3 are happily living in long-term sin) or have children. And besides the point, Mandy and I are the only ones living in California, with the rest scattered to points east. Although my relationship with Pauly has outlasted many of my friends' marriages, it is decidedly not a marriage and when Christmas comes he makes the journey back to his mother's apartment in the Bronx while I drive four miles down Olympic Boulevard to engage in a strange re-creation of the nuclear family dynamic I grew up in. I miss him of course, but understand that family obligations go both ways. Anyhow, I get to join him in New York for New Year's, which in my mind is the far superior holiday, especially when Phish shows are involved.

This all leads me to my hypothesis that the anxiety I've experienced around the holidays over the last few years is rooted in discomfort with having to step back into that daughter role without any buffers. Don't get me wrong; my family isn't evil. They're actually really nice people and my sister is one of the kindest, gentlest souls you'll ever meet. And on Christmas Day I'm honestly focused on what is usually one of my best culinary efforts of the year. It's just that if you're married with kids, Christmas takes on a whole different tone. Santa and toys and wide-eyed joy. If you're a mid-thirties adult who has never, ever spent Christmas anywhere else than your parents' living room, it makes you wonder if you could ever do something so bold as to take a roadtrip or go to Hawaii one year without completely breaking their hearts.

As many times as they tell me they're fine with it, I know I'm already breaking their hearts by choosing not to do the traditional marriage and kids thing. So to make up for it, I keep playing the role of their kid, waking up in their house to open presents from "Santa." I'm serious. I'm 33 years old and my mother still puts a few things from Santa under the tree so Mandy and I have something to open on Christmas morning (our regularly scheduled family present-opening happens on Christmas Eve due to a German tradition passed down from my grandparents. Mandy typically spends the night at the house rather than do a roundtrip to the valley. With me it's about a coinflip whether or not I'm too smashed to drive home by the end of the night). The ritual is incredibly sweet and my mother has a big heart. It's just, you know, a little weird.

Nevertheless, I will spend Christmas Eve and Day at Mom & Dad's. They will be sad when I decline to accompany them to Mass (not a new thing), and rapturous when dinner goes on the plate. I have a budget of $100 and a trip to Whole Foods to make right now. I need beef, crabmeat, prosciutto, mushrooms, figs, and a whole lot of bacon. I am dying just thinking about the sauce. I really hope Mandy bought wine. So much so, that I just interrupted this post to text her a reminder.

Hopefully I have my shit together enough to post some food photos this weekend. Even though he's 3,000 miles away and will not be consuming this meal I can still hear Pauly saying "less vegetables!" and "Figs? Not eating that."

To you and yours, whatever year-end holiday you celebrate, both Disco Santa and I hope it is happy and merry.

Why I'm Not There

2010-12-09T09:56:00.000-08:00

Ten days ago I woke up with some pretty bad lower back pain. I'm no stranger to a little back pain, especially while covering the WSOP or coming off a long-haul flight. Usually it goes away. Well this didn't. It got worse and worse and I put off and put off seeing a doctor because I don't have insurance. By Tuesday afternoon I was laid out on my mother's couch in tears and yesterday morning I bit the bullet and went to Cedars-Sinai. Gotta say the doc there was pretty awesome and when I told him I was a freelancer and paying cash, he went out of his way to help me get out of there on the cheap, knocking his office visit fee down to $165 from the typical $380. The x-ray ($115) revealed that I hadn't pinched my sciatic nerve as I'd feared, but just had a pretty severe lower back sprain. I was sent home with anti-inflammatories and generic vicodin and told that it would not be advisable for me to travel this weekend.

Hence, my absence from the WPBT winter gathering for the first time in six Decembers. I was looking forward to seeing so many of you and I'm truly disappointed. Rest assured, I'm well taken care of; the TV show Mandy shoots for is on hiatus and she is around to help me out, as is my mom, who (despite not always agreeing with everything I write on here) has offered to do my grocery shopping and bring me anything I need.

* * * * *

Since it's the first day in a while that I've been able to sit up at my desk without writhing in pain, I've been catching up on the poker world. I'm waiting on definitive news about the #reidbill just like the rest of you, occasionally bursting out in giggles as it is declared dead/alive/dead/alive on Twitter. Stars and Tilt are shitting their pants, Harrah's and MGM are licking their lips, and many in the poker media are wondering if they'll have jobs if the bill makes it through and a 15-month blackout period begins. Me? As soon as I can sit up for more than two hours I'm playing as many Mini FTOPS events, PCA hyper-turbo sats, and 135-man Rush SNGs as I can before the lights come on and the barstools are stacked up. And when it's cashout time? The way things are now, it'll take a couple of transaction failures and bounced checks before I can hold my bankroll in my hands. If things weren't so sketchy right now with payment processors it's easy to see why so many would be in favor of sticking with the status quo.

(For more on the bill see my lawyer friend F-Train, my writer/professor friend Shamus and the gang at Pokerati. For a pair of cartoon bears discussing JP Morgan's manipulation of the silver market, visit the Tao of Pauly. To learn about insane nosebleed cash games in Macau read The Land of the Unicorns.)

I was also pointed toward a post on Infinite Edge about the future of poker media. Not necessarily in the context of the Reid bill, but about how media outlets are beholden to the major online sites since they are far and away the primary source of advertising and affiliate revenue in the industry. Since online poker sites essentially pay the media's salaries as they are the only companies (a) buying advertising and (b) handing out money for referring them new customers there is, of course, an inherent conflict.

As the economy worsens and the affiliate market crumbles, at some outlets, any attitude outside of "online poker is AWESOME, come play!" is no longer acceptable. Diverting from it in the least can get you replaced with someone who will play ball, and at a lower salary. I know I've paid for it professionally.

Put it this way. If, suddenly, say NBC/Universal was the only corporation willing to buy ads in the Los Angeles Times, don't you think the Times would go a long way toward promoting The Office, the new Black Eyed Peas album, and the upcoming holiday release Little Fockers? Should they dare to write a negative review of any of these products, they'd most likely be immediately punched in the wallet and every one of their employees would feel it. "Journalism" goes out the window pretty quickly and writers become nothing more than thinly disguised PR flacks.

The piece also went on to compliment two-thirds of the Tao of Pokerati (sorry Dan):

"People like Pauly and Benjo have proven how much journalistic integrity can be injected into the most degenerate aspects of the industry. It can be done with style and flair without becoming repetitive."

Some people are still out there doing real investigative journalism in the poker industry. Haley Hintze has been tirelessly peeling many of the layers of the onion that is the UB superuser scandal. And I always think back to Tim Lavalli and Amy Calistri's multi-part piece for PokerNews on the two million extra chips that found their way onto the final table of the 2006 WSOP Main Event. Would something like that fly today or be carefully buried?

Me? Although it's been hard to think of anything other than the searing pain in my back for a while, I'm trying to remain zen about it all. I'm more concerned with writing a screenplay or two and a book before I'm too old or the world goes completely to hell. I've learned a lot about living in the moment rather than living for the future over the last five years. I'm going to keep doing it for as long as I can.

Setlist: Turkey Day

2010-11-29T13:24:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving with my Family- 11/25/10- Los Angeles, CA

special guest Dr. Pauly on guitar and harmonica

Set 1: Good Day Sunshine, Vegetables Ruined Your Maque Choux, Pauly Shaves the Wookbeard>Citizen Pauly, Brownies for Mandy, (There is no) Crosstown Traffic (On Thanksgiving)>Also Sprach Zarathustra

Set 2: Champagne Supernova, Shorting Stocks for Fun and Profit*, Derek Jeter is Washed-Up and Overpaid, Goddamn it to Hell I Can't Carve this Turkey>Food Glorious Food>Red Red Wine, We Need Points>J-E-T-S>We Need Points, Sweet Chocolate Pie**, Sleeping Monkey

Encore: Turkey Cup>Busto Blues> Turkey Cup Reprise

*= Pauly solo acoustic, Mandy on backup vocals

**= to the tune of "Sweet Caroline"

Note: First show of 2010 that did not include Won't You Please Get Health Insurance?

Truth and Consequences

2010-10-23T12:55:00.000-07:00

It's not an easy decision to become a writer. First there's the whole vow of poverty thing, the decision to live without a solid net; without the safety of regular paychecks, and an employer that provides health benefits, makes matching 401(k) contributions, and covers half your Social Security and Medicare taxes (in case you didn't know, the self-employed have to pick that whole tab up themselves). Freelancing is a daily struggle. Writing well, even more so. And it's something I'm working on every day.

To really write well you have to put yourself out there. Use your own history and experiences to create characters, to tell a story, to satirize, to meditate on a theme, to tell the truth. It's something I struggle with, especially after my parents decided to dig deep enough into the internet, find my blog and Twitter account, and tell me how much I'd offended them. The first incident was more than three years ago and I'd really hoped they'd just moved on from it and realized that this is just the way it is if you daughter chooses to be a writer. The second was this morning.

Initially, I panicked. Would I have to go deep underground? Start another blog under yet another new identity? Start censoring myself on Twitter? But thankfully, it took me only about thirty minutes to calm down, respond to my parents in a measured, rational fashion, and get right back on the horse. I can't be a writer if I have to stop and consider what my parents will think of my subject matter or me every time I hit publish. Letting go of that need for approval is one more step toward being an artist. It's also another sacrifice and one I need to make immediately.

My parents can respect my choice, or they can keep wishing I was more like them. I've decided to embrace who I am.

Setlist: Dinner with My Parents

2010-10-22T10:59:00.000-07:00

Dinner with My Parents - 10/21/10 - Los Angeles, CA

Set 1: You Put On Makeup, Is Something Wrong?, C.C. Sabathia is a Fat Colored Man>Theme from The Archie Bunker Show>The Dodgers Hold the Moral High Ground, How Many Phish Shows Are Enough?, Your Car Insurance Costs...What?

Set 2: A Photo of You at Ellie's Wedding>Were You Really That Drunk>Why Do You Always Bring Up Weddings?, It's My Life*, How is Work>Unemployment Lies>How is Work, Let's Take Your Blood Pressure**, Won't You Please Get Health Insurance?

Encore: Dad Would Sleep Better if He Smoked Weed***

*Bon Jovi Cover

** 104/73

*** Solo acoustic

Nugs from the Road: Denver

2010-10-21T12:34:00.001-07:00

Yeah, I get that the unemployed probably shouldn't be taking trips halfway across the country to watch their favorite band perform, but the train had already left the station when it came to last week's excursion to Colorado for Phish's three-night run in Broomfield. Pauly scored us face-value tickets, we had a free place to crash in the joker's basement, and thanks to the combination of a $300 voucher from Great Lakes airlines that I earned during our Telluride travel debacle this summer and my obscene frequent-flyer mile balance on American, I had free transportation.

A few short thoughts/reflections:

Colorado's medicinal marijuana is not only extremely effective but also unbelievably inexpensive. Stuff that goes for $40-45 an eighth in Denver could be sold for $70 in West L.A. I tasted some beautifully cultivated Golden Goat, Sno Cap, White Widow, OG Kush, and a bright, racy sativa called Durban Poison that I'd never experienced before.

Every time we set foot in Colorado, I can feel how badly my boyfriend wants us to move there. Los Angeles is becoming unsustainably expensive and while we'll probably stick around the west coast for a while longer, moving to Denver would save us about 30% on rent and more than 75% on car insurance. It's extremely tempting; there's a great music scene and we have a lot of friends in the area, but it's difficult for me to imagine living there. I am not an outdoorsy person. I don't ski, snowboard, climb, camp or ride a bike. And I will never, ever wear Tevas. Still, I told him at one point on the trip that I'd be willing to live there for one year. I don't know what the fuck has gotten in to me.

The Phish shows themselves were a mixed bag. I had a great time with the Coventry crew (our stretch Escalade party limo was off the hook), but in terms of song selection it was touch & go. Pauly wrote up some excellent reviews on Coventry: Ten Ten Ten, Eurotrash Night, and Off-Kilter in Colorado.

I flew home while Pauly stayed on the road for the remainder of Phish fall tour, including their three-night Halloween run in Atlantic City, which I am so bummed to miss, especially after experiencing Festival 8 last year. I haven't written a lick about poker in 14 days, which is some sort of record for me when it comes to the last four years. I've certainly played some poker during that time and managed to grind up a few hundred bucks, but my creative juices are turning toward other writing projects.

When I got home, a copy of the new Phish DVD Coral Sky was waiting in my mailbox. I wrote up a mini-review for Coventry then got accused of homophobia in the comments, which is pretty damned hilarious. I'm probably the only Phish fan on earth who owns over a dozen Barbra Streisand albums and five cast recordings of Gypsy.

Exit Interview

2010-10-07T09:29:00.000-07:00

In my heart of hearts I knew what was happening from the moment I opened the email. Meeting tomorrow, over the phone. The wording was clinical, the usually friendly, jovial tone nowhere to be found. I tried to convince myself otherwise, awarding percentages to what it could really be about. But I knew. That's why I wasn't too surprised when the words finally landed in my ear.

In late 2006, at a Mexican restaurant in Studio City, John Caldwell hired me to write for PokerNews. Four years, four WSOPs, and three editors later, I was relieved of my duties, a rare L.A. rainstorm pounding the hood of my Mazda as I sat pulled over on a side street six blocks from my apartment.

In the years that passed between those two conversations, the poker industry changed radically. It's no secret that PokerNews (as well as many of their direct competitors) operate on an affiliate model. In layman's terms, the vast majority of the money they make comes from the referral fees online poker sites give them for each person who signs up for an account by clicking on one of their banners. That used to be a lot of money per player. Now, things are different. The money isn't rolling in like it used to, and it's an industry-wide trend.

PokerNews let me go for reasons that had a lot more to do with dollars and cents than anything else. I was one of their higher-paid employees. That's not to say I was making a fortune-- in order to get by I had to supplement my income with freelance work for other clients-- but it was more than a lot of people earn in the poker media. I think I earned every cent I made there and then some. Of course some pieces were better than others, but I know I'm a good writer. In the moments before being terminated from my job, I was called the "best in the industry." But in the New World Order of cost-cutting and downsizing, it is now more valuable for outlets to hire younger, more inexperienced people to write for them rather than paying more money to a veteran who knows what his or her talent is worth.

I will always be grateful to John Caldwell for bringing me into the PokerNews fold and to Jonno Pittock who showed me what it really takes to cover the World Series of Poker. When I think about the proverbial "jerseys on the wall" at PokerNews, I think about folks like Amy Calistri, Tim Lavalli, Martin Harris, Haley Hintze, Michael Friedman, John Hartness, Gene Bromberg, and my own beloved Dr. Pauly (who even came out of retirement for a few months to assist in last year's editorial transition). That's an extremely talented group right there and I'm honored to have worked with each one of them. I also have to thank Dr. Ken Friedman for being a brilliant editor over the last 14 months. He made me a better writer and I'll never forget it.

Although I am now without full-time employment, I will still be covering LAPT and NAPT events for the PokerStars Blog. And maybe you'll get a bit more of me here again. I can only think of one one strong female voice who is still drawing a full-time editorial paycheck in this industry (that's you, Jess Welman) and I still have a lot to say. In my time at PokerNews I hope I informed you, I hope I entertained you, and moreover, I hope I made you think. Some may call me cynical, some might call me jaded. All I did was try to tell the truth.

As a small parting gift, here's what I thought were my five best op-eds for PN this year:

Bets Bigger than Bracelets

Don't Rain on My Parade

The WSOP Tournament of Champions: Where It's 2004 All Over Again

War of the C-Words

If I Had a Vote

Durrrr vs. jungleman12, Duke vs. Negreanu, and Other Delights

2010-09-03T10:22:00.000-07:00

Happy Labor Day weekend America. Well, at least for the 90% of you who still have jobs. My own day gig with PokerNews has kept me quite busy since I returned home from Phish tour so I thought I'd share some of my better scribblings with you.

I have an op-ed column now that runs on Saturdays. I'm not sure anyone reads the internet on Saturdays, but those brave souls who do got to check out The War of the C-Words last week, where I gave my take on Annie Duke and Daniel Negreanu's latest sandbox fight. This week's topic? The models, washed-up reality stars and porn actresses who are being doled out live event buy-ins by a number of online sites. Stay tuned.

I actually have a healthy balance in my Full Tilt account thanks to their Rush Poker 135-man SNGs. I wrote an installment of Bankroll Builders on these (squishy-soft) games.

Tom "durrrr" Dwan started his second "Durrrrr Challenge" against a guy most of you have never heard of before-- 20 year-old University of Maryland student Dan "jungleman12" Cates. I recapped their first two sessions earlier this week.

Pauly also wrote his take on the Dwan/Cates match in a piece for Full Tilt's Poker from the Rail blog. Check out Freaky Styley: durrrr and jungleman12

Smoke tough and enjoy the holiday my friends.

Tao All-Stars Piece

2010-07-03T19:37:00.000-07:00

Yeah, yeah, I know he's my boyfriend but it's still an honor to have my words up on the Tao of Poker. Many moons ago, long before I ever met Pauly or wrote my own blog, I was one of those voracious Tao readers, hitting "refresh" throughout my lunch hour or when I returned to my office between meetings in order to catch up on all the action from the WSOP. Having some of those words be my own now is really something special.

Go read Everything All of the Time: the WSOP's Identity Crisis and let me know what you think.

Lost Vegas - Buy it Now!

2010-06-29T16:20:00.000-07:00

I'm supposed to be a writer but it's hard to put into words what it's like to watch the person you love the most on this earth fulfill their dreams after toiling night and day on their craft for so many years. I'm bursting with pride today for Pauly, because there is only one day in any writer's life where they can say "Today, I released my first book."

Today is that day for him.

Buy Lost Vegas, available right now exclusively on Lulu.com. Buy two. Buy five! They make excellent gifts. And if you can track him down at the Rio between now and the end of the WSOP Main Event, he'd be happy to sign your copy.

Congratulations, my love.

The Ladies Event Debacle, Dwan's Bracelet Bet, and More

2010-06-12T12:13:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning in my own bed. As in, the bed in my apartment in Los Angeles. I'm home for a little over 24 hours to attend the wedding shower of one of my oldest friends (I wrote about picking out her gift here). I'm truly multitasking this morning as I'm writing this while watching the USA-England match and getting a pedicure from a man that looks like Doug Lee.

I wrote a couple of op-eds on PokerNews this week you should check out:

Don't Rain on My Parade addresses the debacle at yesterday's WSOP Ladies' Event when a dozen or so men decided to play to "make a point."

Bets Bigger than Bracelets talks about what it takes to get the elite pros interested in the preliminary events at the WSOP.

I also made another guest appearance on the Tao of Pokerati discussing douchebag bracketology. For example, what is worse? The guy who slowrolls you or the guy who screams "YEAH BABY YEAH!" when he wins a pot?

Pauly also wrote his take on dudes playing the Ladies' Event in Dude Looks Like a Lady and Get Baked.

I also got to cover one of the most loaded final tables thus far at the WSOP-- the $10,000 World Championship Stud Eight or Better. Congrats to Frank Kassela for winning his first bracelet.

You can also follow me on Twitter, although today's tweets may be more rich-people-wedding-related than pithy pokery platitudes.

Back in Vegas in 24 hours.

Monday Morning Linkage

2010-06-07T04:20:00.000-07:00

I'm back in the Rio covering the $10,000 World Championship Seven-Card Stud Hi/Lo event, or as AlCantHang has dubbed it "The Rock Garden Open." However, hardly anyone was paying attention to the stud action tonight with the Tom Dwan circus unfolding across the room. A good percentage of the Stud hi/lo field was sweating gargantuan side bets on whether Dwan would win a bracelet and seemed to be playing the $10K only to distract themselves. When Dwan lost heads-up, I've never seen all the tension sucked out of the Amazon Room so quickly. Goddammit, I was looking forward to writing the story of how "durrrr" broke the poker economy and took "The Corporation" for more money than Andy Beal ever did.

Anyway, since we don't have that to go on, here's a few stories I wrote this week along with some stellar reads penned by my friends and colleagues.

The $50K Players' Championship drew 116 players, up from last year, but the numbers are down overall at this year's WSOP, as I addressed in Deconstructing the $50K and Declining Donkament Fields.

F-Train also took a look at the year-to-year numbers in his post The Numbers Game.

I had to ship Pauly $60 yesterday after losing my first prop bet of the WSOP. He gave me 3-1 that another Brit would win a bracelet this year and thanks to James "Flushy" Dempsey, I'm out the price of a good eighth of hydro. Check out my beloved's recap God Save the Queen Reprise and Seven for Men.

I made a guest appearance on the Tao of Pokerati, where Michaski and I discussed the finer points of the "douchebag look."

Two pieces I wrote last week on my reaction to Victory Poker's ad campaign have received a bit of attention and plenty of haters. Victory's CEO even commented on the post on the Wicked Chops Poker Podcast. Decide for yourself by reading Ladies, Here's What Victory Poker Thinks of You and Victory Poker CEO Responds to Ad Campaign Criticism.

Finally, if you're around the Rio, take the time and give some of the PokerNews WSOP bloggers and floor reporters some love. They have a grueling, utterly thankless job and certainly aren't getting rich from it. Several high-profile pros have taken to Twitter to bash PN's WSOP reporting and if I had the necessary dough, I'd challenge any of them to do our job for a day and see if they could hack it.

That's it. The sky is beginning to lighten, so I'm bongin' out and going to bed.

Victory Poker CEO Responds to Ad Campaign Criticism

2010-06-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

It's not sexism, ladies. It's "just marketing"

After Liv Boeree, Annie Duke, and Vanessa Selbst all took down major tournament titles earlier this year, the Entities at Wicked Chops Poker proclaimed 2010 "The Year of the Woman" and in their latest podcast, they speak with two of the more prominent ladies in the game-- newly minted EPT champion Boeree and Lacey Jones, who seems to be filling her resume with more and more poker television hosting gigs every week. Their third guest, however, was Victory Poker CEO Dan Fleyshman. As you all know by now, I'm not too happy with their marketing campaign and Fleyshman responded to the criticism lobbied at him not only by myself, but several others in the poker blogosphere.

Here is Fleyshman's response, which comes around the 15-minute mark in Episode 3 of the Wicked Chops Podcast

"I was pretty shocked. I mean, like everybody uses models in their campaigns and I think I did a pretty classy job of it. I used Playboy Playmates and I also used traditional models as well, from different countries. But I also used guys. Like, you know what I did? I did like, a strip poker photo shoot last week-- the guys were the ones topless in a lot of the shots and the girls were the ones winning the game. So for everybody to say, like, I don't know, to feel sexist in a way is like, weird to me because my very first charity event, I donated money to breast cancer. I sponsor the LIPS poker tour. I'm sponsoring the womens' events. Like, I'm involved on both sides of this. So it's just marketing. Like, i have to do everything. I'm not just focusing on models and I'm not just focusing on guys. I'm trying to do everything. So it was very shocking. That's why, if you've noticed, on the internet I'm defending myself a lot because I'm not sexist."

Fleyshman goes on to talk about how he's spending every weekend teaching Playboy Playmate Sara Underwood how to play poker, which I'm sure is a huge personal sacrifice.

"It does feel weird to me, because we're so open-minded and we're so across the board so it's weird that so many people would feel we're sexist," Fleyshman said.

Sorry buddy, but any way you slice it, there's nothing "across the board" when it comes to those ads. "Across the board," at least in my interpretation, would mean appealing to a broad demographic. I don't see how any of the images currently put forth by Victory Poker appeal anyone other than young men who enjoy looking at photos of surgically enhanced models.

Victory Poker's message is pretty clear. And in my opinion, "but I donated money to breast cancer" and "it's just marketing" constitutes a pretty weak-sauce response. Instead of teaching Playmates how to play poker, how about sponsoring some professional female players instead? Concerned about "marketing" and "image" and don't want to have someone (gulp) unattractive in your ads? How about putting a drop-dead gorgeous woman like Christina Lindley, Maria Ho or Lauren Kling on your team instead of relying on provocatively dressed models to sell your product?

And I'm sorry Mr. Fleyshman, but you're wrong. Not everyone uses models. Bodog tried that circa 2005 (as some readers pointed out in the comments after my last post) and look at their market share today If you want to head down that road, well, that's where it ends.

Ladies, here's what Victory Poker thinks of you

2010-05-26T13:02:00.000-07:00

Oh, will you now?

Back in college, I remember sitting in one of those introductory communications classes called "Mass Media and Society" or something of that ilk. We had an assignment to analyze advertising messages and were given pages torn out of magazines to analyze. I can't remember what my own ad was but when I laid eyes on Victory Poker's campaign, I flashed right back to Fisk Hall.

The men in this image are the only ones with seats at the table and cards in front of them. The women are draped around their shoulders like accessories. They aren't playing the game, they're only interested in their men-- and their men don't appear to be interested in them at all for the moment. While each man has a distinctive "look" and personal style, blonde women all have strikingly similar appearances and the brunettes could be twins. The message here is that women do not have a place at the poker table. It's a place for men to play and women to watch. I mean, the women don't even have chairs to sit in! The one in the middle that looks like that plastic surgery chick from The Hills is confined to Andrew Robl's lap.

I understand marketing. I'm extremely pragmatic. And I understand that the online poker market is overwhelmingly young males. Victory Poker is capitalizing on the perception people have of these particular pro endorsers' jet-setting, nightclubbing Vegas lifestyles. And that might get them some customers. Hell, it might get them a whole lot of customers. I just hope that the female players out there think twice about supporting a site that obviously thinks so little of them. I've always had a lot more respect for the online sites (coughPokerStarscough) who haven't ever found the need to resort to such shameless marketing tactics and have instead relied on the quality of their product.

I also read this morning that the WSOP's Milwaukee's Beast No-Limit Lounge or whatever the fuck they called it last year has been renamed "The Man-Cave." While my inner feminist was initially fired up over this as well, I've decided to let the WSOP have their man-cave. Women are too smart to drink that flavorless piss of a beer. I also have the sneaking suspicion that if Jeffrey Pollack was still the commissioner of the WSOP, the unfortunate moniker would have been done away with. Miss you, commish.

I'm used to being a woman in an overwhelmingly male-dominated field. I've done it my whole life. I just hoped we'd come a little further than crap like this.

Betfair Roundtable and TOC Op-Ed

2010-05-14T13:13:00.000-07:00

Just a quickie here, kids before I run back into my pre-WSOP cave which includes pumping out articles for PokerNews, SCOOP recaps for PokerStars Blog, and consuming copious amounts of California's finest.

Shamus invited me to be a part of the Betfair Bloggers' Roundtable about the upcoming World Series of Poker along with Pauly, Michalski, Otis, and many other fine folks. Check it out.

I also shared my balloting process for this year's WSOP Tournament of Champions in a two-part op-ed for PokerNews:

Casting the Tournament of Champions, Part 1

Casting the Tournament of Champions, Part 2

Am I really 8 days away from my fifth summer in Las Vegas? Pass the bong...

The Good China

2010-04-27T14:40:00.000-07:00

When I was seven years old, the mini-mall on the corner of Pico and Westwood Boulevards was torn down and the Westside Pavilion went up in its place. At the western end of this new retail palace was a department store my mom had never heard of before called Nordstrom. I was in need of a dress for my First Communion, so we walked the three blocks over there the day after it opened.

Everything seemed so fancy-- the marble floors, the guy in a tuxedo playing standards on a grand piano next to the escalators, the sequined gowns that hung underneath signs that said "Armani" and "St. John." Over in the kids' section, my mom pulled a pink satin dress off a rack and held it up to me. Looked like it would be a perfect fit. Before letting me try it on, however, she glanced at the price tag.

"Only $28? That can't be right," she said.

"No mommy, that says $228."

Most of the color drained from my mother's face as she immediately re-racked the dress, took my hand, and led me toward the escalator.

That 25-year old moment came back to me only a few minutes ago as I scrolled through an old friend's wedding registry. And when I say old, I mean old. I've known her since before I had to look for that First Communion dress.

I always get a little antsy and bitter when I have to buy wedding gifts, even when they are for people I genuinely care about. As much as we love each other and as long as we've been together, Pauly and I don't plan on getting married. It's not something we need to do, though sometimes we joke around about how we should just do it "for the stuff." Then again, we're not people obsessed with stuff; he especially turns anxious when confronted with how many material things he's acquired since "domesticating" in L.A.

But sometimes, the selfish side of me wonders what it would be like to have dishes and sets of towels that matched.

I didn't think people bought "good china" anymore. These days, it seems like a quaint notion straight out of an episode of Mad Men. When our friends come over for a meal, we eat on a hodgepodge of white Target and IKEA plates and I'm pretty sure no one knows the difference. My parents have "good china" that they got at their wedding more than thirty years ago, and mostly it collects dust in the dining room cabinet. I thought the good china might have been one of those old-fashioned ideas my generation declared ridiculous, like smoking indoors or abstinence before marriage. But after scrolling through my old friend's Bloomingdale's registry, I discovered one thing and remembered another.

1. I guess people still buy "good china," or at least ask for it when they get married.

2. I went to private school with rich people.

The plates are Italian-made, bone-white with a wide silver trim. A perfect blend of classy and arty, just like her. She requested ten and still needed ten. I clicked the quantity arrow to "10" and hit "add to bag."

When the next page popped up I was catapulted back to Nordstrom in 1985. Those plates weren't $90 for all ten. They were $90 each. With tax and shipping, the price tag cracked four figures. For dinner plates. The matching serving bowl is $245 if you're curious.

If I told my mother about the plates, she'd ask me why I was so surprised. "They're loaded," I can hear her saying, her New Jersey accent sliding in on the long vowels. And she's right. Ellie's parents have to be blowing six figures on this wedding. The least they can hope for is that some of their Beverly Hills douchebag friends at least hook their daughter up with some dishes.

Further down the list, I noticed Ellie had registered for the same stainless steel Cuisinart 550 coffeemaker that I use every morning to brew the warm caffeinated nectar that keeps me conscious in the morning hours. I deleted the good china from my cart and added it instead.

American Idol Season 9: Bowersox and Magnus Highlight Worst. Episode. Ever.

2010-03-24T13:02:00.000-07:00

If American Idol was a poker tournament, this week would be the money bubble. Of the 11 remaining contestants, 10 will make the American Idols Live summer tour and guarantee themselves a payday in the $200,000 range. While it's not exactly a sum to retire on, it's a huge boost for a struggling musician and it could go a long way toward financing their art over the next several years if they spend it wisely. Simon Cowell started the show with an ominous warning, telling his little lambs that "it's absolutely the worst night to go" right as they're lead to potential slaughter. If there is a God up there listening, please let it be Tim Urban or that little gay kid.

The Idols also met their first professional "mentor" tonight. And those honors went to... Miley Cyrus? A twelfth-grader fond of flashing her underwear in front of her iPhone camera and dressing like a hooker? What, the Jonas Brothers weren't available?

In a departure from last week's downright specific theme (sing a Rolling Stones song), this week the contestants had all 116 years of Billboard #1 hits at their disposal. Despite the range and depth of song choices available to them, most of the Idols completely whiffed on song choices, turning this week's two-hour performance episode into a never-ending set at some horrifying karaoke bar. Yes, this could possibly be the Worst. Episode. Ever. and if it weren't for Wookie Girl and that little wail-in-a-box Siobhan Magnus, I might have flipped over to the new episode of 90210.

Lee Dewyze "The Letter": I totally didn't get the Rat Pack direction he went in tonight. Why not stay with the rootsy style that was working for him? Dewyze has great vocals and should have picked a song where they could shine instead of crowding the stage with a horn section and a trio of backup singers. Throwing up all these other stage elements to take the focus off himself is totally counter-intuitive at this point in the competition. Does he think he needs some flash to make up for his lack of charisma? Ding ding ding! Dewyze needs to find some panache in a hurry if he's really going to make a go of a career. Although, American Idol has certainly launched bores in the past. Carrie Underwood anyone?

Paige Miles "Against All Odds": Honey I'd be worried about those heels too. And I'd be even more worried about your song choice. A sleepy 80's ballad sung seated on the stairs? This was one of the most off-key, utterly tone-deaf performances in the last few seasons. Miles has this lovely mezzo belt-- why pick a song that falls right in its break? I was looking for the fast-forward button by the one-minute mark.

Tim Urban "Crazy Little Thing Called Love": Wow. I didn't think anyone could stink up the joint any worse than Paige Miles did, but Urban came close. This was Cheesy Dated Teen Idol Crap. Going out into the audience to be surrounded by one's adoring fans is so incredibly presumptuous at this stage. Vote for the Worst is going to have a field day with this one (and apparently a few got in to the audience).

Aaron Kelly "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" :Oh, sweetie. Your "crush" on Miley isn't convincing any of us. And she only dates 23-year old underwear models anyway. Performances like this one are the moments on American Idol that make me want to shoot myself. It's not camp, it's not good music, it's bland poppy shit that teenage girls like. Even if we're talking about him in the context of that genre (and unfortunately, it is a genre), Kelly's high notes are nowhere near anything Clay Aiken or even David Archuleta can do.

Crystal Bowersox "Me and Bobby McGee": Wookie Girl unfortunately ruined her street cred when she had Miley Cyrus sign her guitar. She's gonna catch some shit for that. Hey, I have that dress. And I like her hair up. As for the song, well, I think she should have trusted her instincts and left it in the lower key instead of listening to Miley Fucking Cyrus. But it was a great choice for her and firmly in her wheelhouse. Keep bringing it, Wookie Girl! Hey, she's got a carpet! Just like Phish. Hey Seacrest, sit down. Wanna smoke a bowl?

Michael Lynche "When a Man Loves a Woman" Another snoooooozy song that is noooooot contemporary and sooooo cruise ship. I really want to like this guy but gah, I'm so sick of the lame, familiar song choices. This dude is an R&B beast-- find some freakin' deep cuts or you won't be able to compete with this bunch.

Andrew Garcia "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" Jesus Christ. Another cheesy, loungey arrangement. Shoot me now. Andrew, don't take advice from Miley Fucking Cyrus. Keep that guitar in your arms. This kind of shtick doesn't work for you. After tonight, I'm even more confused about this guy. I also told myself that I'd take a bong hit if any of the judges invoke his performance of "Straight Up." Gah! Kara just said it!

Katie Stevens "Big Girls Don't Cry" Was I hallucinating that she had a bigger voice than what I've hear so far from this girl? This was pitchy all over the place, completely oversung, and... yeah, basically nails on a chalkboard. This wasn't a preview of a hot new recording artist, its was more like a high school talent show performance from the head choirgirl. And I used to BE the head choirgirl. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Casey James "The Power of Love" OK...was it a requirement that a minimum number of contestants utilize the sunglassed horn section? I usually say that everything is better with horns, but in this case, it totally cheesed up the arrangement. This was nothing but bad 80's cover band shizzle. Seriously, can any of these kids pick a song?

Didi Benami "You're No Good" I love how Didi pronounces like four out of five vowels on each syllable. Her high notes were a bit sharp, but at least the arrangement wasn't the bad lounge act like some of her competitors. She took their note about creating drama a bit literally and guess what? Now the judges want her to go back to being "herself." But... they thought that what she did before was boring? See how easy it is to lose your mind?

Siobhan Magnus "Superstition" I laughed out loud when Magnus said"I think it's wicked cool she said my voice has swagger!" when talking about meeting Miley. But gurrrrrl, WTF is with that outfit? Unlike you, I was actually alive in 1984 and that was almost too authentic. Now, a word about her "wail-in-a-box." You know, that obscenely high belt/scream. I get Cowell's point about the high G's and A's. You can't trot that shit out every time. And you shouldn't. You can't hit those things every day of your life at 100% or your voice will be shot in five years. It's still goddamned impressive, though. I'm not knocking it. Just let it be an element of surprise rather than an element we expect every time.

Please, please stay: Wookie Girl, Wail-in-a-Box

Go away. Now: Tim Urban, Paige Miles, Katie Stevens

American Idol Season 9: Rolling Stones Week

2010-03-17T16:11:00.000-07:00

This is your Top 12, America. How could you?

Last night on American Idol, the Top 12 took on the music of the Rolling Stones. Are these kids even old enough to know who the Rolling Stones are? As I sat there, waiting for the first teenage train wreck to take the stage, I told Pauly that I thought this choice for theme-of-the-week was both good and bad. We were going to hear good songs, even some great songs, but whom among this bunch could even come close to the swagger and drama of Mick Jagger? Could any of these girls turn in a cover of "Paint it Black" that would even come close to the neighborhood of Grace Potter's electrifying version?

Well, I'd be right on one account and wrong on the other. Let's look at last night's performances:

Michael Lynche, "Miss You": Lynche may have stage presence to spare and an easy engagement with the audience, but the vocal on this was so sub-par, punctuated with gasps and hoots straight out of thfe Michael Jackson playbook. The judges jizzed all over it,fff but thankfully Cowell got real and called him out on the "corny" dance moves and affectations.

Didi Benami "Play with Fire": This was a very good song choice but such a strange lyric for Didi, because she is anything but fiery. Didi is more like a lemon tart or some sort of delicate dessert. She did get to open up her vocals big-time in this performance and it was something she really needed to do in order to pick up some votes. The vocals were there, but unfortunately the emotion was only at about half-speed. Oh, and Didi? Struggling for four years in L.A. is NOTHIN' kiddo. Nothing at all. You're here four years and you're aleady in the Top 12 of American Idol? You are fucking blessed.

Casey James "It's All Over Now": I liked the guitar riffs and the blues sound he brought to the song but I'm not gaga over this dude. It was fine enough, and you know he'll move on to next week but... meh? Holy shit, is Simon wearing a cardigan?

Lacey Brown "Ruby Tuesday": Wait a minute. This chick is still on this show? And her parents are pastors? And I've so heard a cover just like this on YouTube hundreds of times. Hold on... why is she sitting down on the egde of the stage? Did she hurt herself? This was a very one-note performance for me. In terms of the arrangement, we needed to see more dynamics and range from her, not just the cutesy lilting vocal shtick that has carried her this far. Still, this was probably her best performance since Hollywood Week. Can you feel the warmth from me for this girl?

Andrew Garcia "Gimme Shelter": Moreno Valley Gangland Boy still hasn't delivered since his genius cover of Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" and...wait a minute... Randy Jackson is wearing a cardigan too? A lavender one? I liked his intentions with the arrangement which took the song an unexpected pop direction, but despite what I truly believe were his best efforts, Garcia just couldn't pull off this vocal. I mean Christ on a cracker, that thing is a mountain to climb.

Katie Stevens "Wild Horses": Oh, heavens. How is this sweet little underage thing going to sing the Stones? And why in God's name did she pick the song Simon just recorded with that batshit crazy Scottish chick who won Britain's Got Talent? And why is her interpretation of "be young" a floral tea party dress and pearl-accented jewelry? Stevens' performance was so high-school talent show I wanted to turn on some Ani DiFranco and self-mutilate. Seriously, this chick and not Lily Scott, America? You're all on crack. When your chosen ingenue is completely outdone by a 48-year old virgin with a monobrow, something just isn't right.

Tim Urban "Under My Thumb": Oh fuck. This kid's still in it too? The reggae-inspired arrangement did nothing more for me than make me want to smoke more marijuana than I'd already consumed in the seventy minutes I'd been watching this drivel. I didn't get it either, Randy.

Siobhan Magnus "Paint it Black": So one of the girls did take on "Paint it Black" and thank you Jesus for letting it be Siobhan. I love this girl. She's like, a total home-schooled freakshow artiste and it's amazing. This was a standout moment for her-- a gutsy, rangy performance that didn't compromise her personal style. This performance was kind of like what would happen if Bjork and Aretha Franklin's love child sang this song. I loved the quiet, waltz-y string intro, and I loved the drama she brought to the climax with that insaaaanely high belt.

Lee Dewyze "Beast of Burden": If you close your eyes, this could have been a Jack Johnson or Dave Mattehews Band single. Dewyze delivered with a contemporary, acoustic take on the song with poppy vocal riffs. This shit is a lotta people's cup of tea and I think Lee knows it. Sure it was a safe choice, but he's not in a situation right now where he really needs to take a risk in order to pick up votes.

Paige Miles "Honky-Tonk Woman": Are you serious? This chick is still here too? Tonight we heard some of those vocals that got her this far, but Paige is still wayyy too cruise ship with her performance elements. She has a voice that deserves a place in the Top 12, but completely lacks a style to go with it.

Aaron Kelly "Angie": Why do I get the impression that the only Angie this kid is ever going to get close to has a penis under his skirt?

Crystal Bowersox "You Can't Always Get What You Want": I don't know what the judges were smoking, but I thought Wookie Girl blew the doors off the place. Coming into this week she was (and still is) one of the clear front-runners, but I have to believe that the judges' critiscism was something akin to a teacher grading an "A" student even harder, just to push her to her potential. This performance, along with Siobhan's are the only ones worthy of downloading this week IMO. I also love that Wookie Girl exchanged hippie gifts with Lily Scott and has her feather attached to one of her dreads. Gah, Lily could have killed a Stones song!

Please please stay: Crystal Bowersox, Siobhan Magnus, Didi Benami

Go away! : Tim Urban, Katie Stevens

I'll leave you all with Wookie Girl's performance from last night, which starts around the 0:36 mark:

Out With the Old

2010-03-10T17:00:00.000-08:00

Pot Committed 1.0, July 8, 2005-March 10, 2010
From the minute I put it up over five years ago until about 2:00 this afternoon, I always thought my site was ugly. Cluttered. Hard to read. A blight on the internet, really. About a year and a half ago I first thought about changing it up and I commissioned a logo and everything, but my (extremely) limited technical skills always stood in the way of an overhaul.

But then Pauly started renovating his own sites. And he showed me how easy the new Blogger templates were to manage.

"Easy enough for an idiot like me?"
"Yes, easy enough for an idiot like you."

So with thanks to him for getting me started and to Mookie for the logo, welcome to Pot Committed 2.0. I hope you like it.

Terremoto

2010-03-02T12:30:00.000-08:00

I am the whitest, blondest girl you'll ever meet. I don't spend enough time outdoors and if I did, I still wouldn't tan. My skin is practically reflective, my eyes are blue-gray when they're not bloodshot from smoking and I blend in far better on the streets of Copenhagen than Punta del Este.

Why then, did every Uruguyan railbird choose to come up to me in media row and start rattling off questions en espanol, rather than the ten or eleven other people who fit a Spanish-speaking profile far better than I?

It boggles the mind.

* * * * *

I spent the last week covering the LAPT Punta del Este in Uruguay. It's a journey that requires about 24 hours of travel on each side and a six time-zone shift eastward. I don't know if I'm just getting old or what, but this was one of the more exhausting tournament trips I've had in recent memory. Never underestimate the extra sleep one acquires when staying at the venue rather than commuting.

On the morning of the final table, I woke up and went about business as usual. Shower, wrestle with hotel hair dryer. Attempt to look presentable. Hit up hotel breakfast buffet. As I came out of my room, PokerNews' Eric Ramsey was passing by on the way back to his own.

"8.8 earthquake in Chile. Ray's watching CNN in his room."

Holy mother of God. 8.8. I still can't fathom what that feels like. Well, maybe I can. It has to feel like the end of the world. I've been twenty miles from the epicenter of a 7.1 and that felt like a bullet train passing through our living room. Windows blew out. The chimney of every house on our block fell into the street. Anything glass-- gone. The refrigerator detatched from the wall and fell flat on its face in the middle of the kitchen. Mariniara sauce everywhere. We were cleaning up for days.

We didn't feel a thing in Punta. Not even the smallest rattle. Then again, we were more than 1,000 miles from the epicenter. That's greater than the distance from Denver to Los Angeles.

Still, I knew my mother would be freaking out. I checked my email and sure enough there was a frantic message waiting in my inbox. I assured her we were fine, that we didn't even feel anything, and we'd be fine getting home.

I watched as the disaster-mongers on cable news waited with baited breath for the resulting tsunami, almost as if they wanted it to happen. Cameras were poised everywhere, waiting to capture the destruction. It sickened me, and thankfully only mild surges lapped over the shores of Hawaii and the west coast. Later, the scene on TV switched to the looters, many of whom were ordinary Chileans who could afford their groceries and wanted to pay for them, but were driven to desperate measures.

"I think we'd better get some more canned food when we get home," said Pauly.

Both of us are supposed to be headed to Chile in two weeks for the next LAPT tournament in the coastal town of Vina del Mar. Naturally, that event is now up in the air. I was in Vina last January and remembered marveling at the houses built into the hillsides that were literally standing up on sticks, much like they do in the canyons of the Hollywood Hills. The mountains are back only a few kilometers from the sea and in the flatter part of the city, massive apartment buildings with floor-to-ceiling glass windows line the streets.

A view of the hillsides in Vina del Mar, Chile

An apartment building two blocks from the beach in Vina del Mar

Canal-side buildings in Vina del Mar

Sign for tsunami evacuation route

My to my mother's delight, we got home without incident. We took a short hop from Montevideo to Buenos Aires, where we both scored business-class upgrades for our long leg from EZE-DFW. After hundreds of thousands of miles of bad beats, we finally sucked out.

Of course, I immediately sat down in 9E and broke the seat, requiring the assistance of flight attendant Tom to get it back in its upright and locked position. Flight attendant Tom also helped close the sticky handle on my wheelie and put it in the overhead for me. When it appeared not to fit vertically, he just shrugged and stuck it in sideways. Such a violation in coach would get your luggage angrily gate-checked and lost on the ground in DFW. Instead I got two full meals, three glasses of wine, a loaner pair of Bose headphones, enough room to stretch out and sleep comfortably, and most importantly, treated like a human being instead of cargo. Usually my emails to American Airlines are filled with venom about my last travel experience. This time, I got to write one about how courteous flight attendant Tom was to us. I hope he gets a bonus or something.

As we deplaned in Dallas, one of the other flight attendants got on the PA and shilled for votes for Alex Lambert on American Idol. Apparently his mom works for the airline.

And speaking of Idol, I have a lot of catching up to do before tonight's episode. Uruguayan TV aired the Olympics, but not Ryan Seacrest & co.

Last Night I...

2010-02-21T12:16:00.000-08:00

- Went to the Commerce Casino for the first time in a long time, accompanying Pauly to the boozy WPT Invitational pre-party.

-Saw a lot of C-list celebrities and former reality stars posing for "red carpet" photos in a desperate attempt to stay relevant.

-Was disappointed that Mad Men's Jon Hamm did not make a return appearance (he played last year).

-Caught up with Parvis, Laney, the Wicked Chops guys, Michalski, and other media types.

-Watched Eskimo Clark slither around a free buffet. He liked the chicken-on-a-stick.

-Played in a crazy good $4-8 LHE game with a full kill against a Jesus Freak, a drunk redneck, six Asians, and a very angry Russian dude who played every hand.

-And resisted the urge to break into "She Bangs" as I took this photo of Pauly and William Hung.

For a fuller recap, check out the first part of Pauly's two-part piece on the Tao.

Sunset Shrink

2010-02-17T16:52:00.000-08:00

My psychiatrist doesn't know me.

I understand that this is a pretty strange thing to be said about the medical professional with whom I've entrusted my mental health, but nevertheless it's true. I see her very infrequently, perhaps once a year, for less than 15 minutes a visit during which she asks me vague questions and I reply with even vaguer answers while I suppress all the sassy replies that threaten to burst out of my mouth. Then, she writes me a prescription for another year's worth of yellow pills that have chemically balanced my brain since 2002. It's always the same prescription. It's usually the same conversation. The whole exchange is so utterly brief. It has to be. Those 15 minutes cost $110. And that's with the self-pay discount.

"Oh, I know who you are."

"I guess they did find my chart."

"Yes, they did. So how are you?"

"I'm all right, I guess."

"How is your work? Do you still have the same job?"

"I don't know, what was I doing the last time we saw each other?"

"It says here you were moving in with your boyfriend. And traveling a lot for...poker? Is that right?"

"Yes."

"So your boyfriend, he's a gambler?"

I pondered my potential responses. Should I tell her about the sports betting? Or maybe his tendencies to fall into Mega-Pai Gow tilt? Or how fucking impossible it is to beat the rake at $5-$10 limit hold'em?

"No. He's not a gambler. He's a writer too."

"But do you still gamble?"

"If you call the occasional $11 turbo sit-n-go gambling."

"I'm not sure what that is."

"Don't worry about it. I sure don't."

"So how's your mood?"

"Like, in general?"

"Just day-to-day."

"Well, I only feel really homicidal when I'm driving behind idiots on Pico Blvd. who are texting on their iPhones or when I'm seated next to a crying baby on a plane. But I have Xanax for that."

"You do?"

"Yeah. You prescribed it for me."

"Oh, I see. I did. Do you need a refill on that too?"

My psychiatrist scribbled out the same prescription she's scribbled for me for the last eight years. It ain't broken so why rock the boat, right?

"Nice view," I offered, gazing at the mountain-to-ocean panorama outside her tenth-floor window.

She showed me out her door. A handsome Asian man in a black suit with a drug company name tag sat outside in the waiting room.

"Jason, so good to see you! Come on in."

He disappeared inside with my psychiatrist as her assistant signaled for my attention.

"I need that $110 now. Cash or check only."

American Idol Season 9: Hollywood Week

2010-02-12T17:18:00.000-08:00

Didi Benami, among the Season 9 front-runners after her Hollywood Week performance

It's OK, you can put down the razor blades. The auditions are over. There are no more 19-year old single mothers with sick aunts and learning disabilities for FOX to tug at the nation's heartstrings with. The lucky 181 that left their audition cities with those precious golden tickets arrived in Hollywood this week and the requisite chewing-up-and-spitting out by Simon Cowell & Co. began in earnest.

You knew some of these poor saps had no chance of making it. Vanessa "I ain't never been on an aeroplane" Wolfe showed some country charm in her initial audition, but completely blew it in Hollywood with a tone-deaf rendition of Blind Melon's "No Rain" that sent every pampered Shih-tzu in the Hollywood Hills into a fit of agonizing howls. By the end of the first round, she was back on that aeroplane on her way back to her hick town along with so many others who shared their sob stories in the audition round.

Skiiboski, he of the five felony arrests in the state of Florida? It's the end of the line, baby.

Justin "Cancer Boy" Williams, the Michael Buble sound-alike? Not gonna happen.

Megan Wright, who charmed the judges with her precocious little brother? Sorry, love.

Whip girl? The Jersey sisters? The dude who did the splits and ripped his pants? Freaky beat-box boy? All goners.

Although many of the contestants weren't able to hit the bar they set for themselves at their initial audition, there were plenty who sailed right over it. Lilly Scott picked up a guitar and killed Ella Fitzgerald's "Lullaby of Birdland." Casey James turned out to be a sick blues singer. And wookette Crystal Bowersox blew the doors off the Kodak with a performance of "Natural Woman" that recalled Kelly Clarkson's star-making turn on the same tune during Season 1. And Andrew Garcia did the best rendition of Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" since Showcase played it solo on the trumpet at his Bar Mitzvah.

Perhaps the most memorable performance of the lot came from Didi Benami,who sang Kara DioGuardi's "Terrified" well... better than Kara DioGuardi.

For the 96 Idol hopefuls that survived the first cut, the dreaded Group Round awaited. In this stage, it's not so much about how the singers perform individually, it's about how well they can learn a piece of music quickly, work with others, and handle simple choreography. After all, they're going to have to shoot all those Ford commercials and perform those dreadful group numbers.

Naturally there was a girl group that couldn't get their shit together, some seriously mangled lyrics, and at least one idiot who embarrassed himself further by asking the judges for one more chance after he was cut. I was rooting for the quirky Denver group "The Mighty Rangers" who dressed like they were about to rage in the lot of a Disco Biscuits show, but their performance ended up a total trainwreck.

And just to prove my heart isn't completely blackened, I did think it was quite touching to watch Michael Lynche watch the birth of his baby daughter over an iPhone. Steve Jobs can't buy better publicity than that.

Surprise of the week? Ellen DeGeneres is a pretty good judge. She injects just the right amount of levity to the process, while maintaining a realistic outlook . I loved it when she fucked with the contestants, telling them to step forwards and backwards.

Next week, there will be more bloodshed as the 71 remaining Idols are narrowed down to the Top 24. Get your knives out, Hollywood.

UPDATE: I just got off the phone with Showcase. He couldn't believe that I didn't remember that Didi Benami used to live in the building next door to us. After a bit of memory-jogging I did recall the other blonde singer who lived with Angelina during her tumultuous breakup with her cokehead boyfriend. She was pale and thin and seemed lost amidst all the drama. She moved out after a few months and apparently, it did her a world of good.

Four Years On

2010-02-03T11:36:00.000-08:00

Four years ago today, Hollywood, in the form of a humorless upper-management hatchet man, threw me off the mountain I'd spent the previous seven years climbing.

I wish I could say that I never looked back, and in many ways I haven't, but in reality I look back almost every day. How different would my life be right now if I were a 32-year old V.P. of Feature Production instead of a freelance writer? I'd have a six-figure salary and health insurance, but everything I've learned about myself in the 1,400 or so days I've spent off Wilshire Blvd. tells me that I would be depressed, trapped, and probably alone.

Instead, four years on, I'm happier than I've ever been and still wildly in love with the same man who consoled me that night over 3,000 miles of phone lines as I reeled in shock at the collapse of my former life. That love is better than anything Hollywood could ever give me. Even better than an Oscar? Hell, yes.

For a look back at that fateful day, check out the Pot Committed classic "I gave Hollywood my twenties and all I got was this lousy severance check."

American Idol Season 9, Week 3: Shut Up and Sing

2010-01-28T17:24:00.000-08:00

Back in the day, she was on "Barney & Friends"

What's the line Simon Cowell so loves to use when debating a contestant's merit? Oh yeah, I remember.

It's a SINGING competition.

With three excruciating weeks of American Idol auditions in the bag, it doesn't remotely feel like one.

Instead, it's Welfare Check Idol. Breeder Idol. Terminal Disease Idol.

Andrew Garcia, I don't care if your parents moved you out of Gang Land to give you a better life. Can you sing? (In this case he can, and would have advanced, sob story or not).

Christian Spear, I'm very sorry you got leukemia when you were 4. But the fact that you hung it around your neck actually turned me off from your performance. And you're a damned good singer too. Only 16 and you can sing Etta James like that?

Chris Golightly, it sucks that you were raised in two dozen different foster homes. But you're 25 now. Get over it.

"This is not a Lifetime Movie, sweetheart... you have to have talent," said Katy Perry as Golightly finished an unimpressive audition.

Thank God someone out there understands what I'm talking about.

Still, Foster-Care Boy is going to Hollywood. It'll really suck for him when he's cut and FOX is done exploiting his "story."

This week's episodes also made me remember why Idol tends to avoid Los Angeles on the audition tour: my city is full of desperate faker actors willing to do ANYTHING for a minute on national television. Anything.

Like the scary fag in the rubberized rugby shirt who screamed his way through a Cheap Trick song.

Like Mr. Creepypants Jason Greene who huffed and puffed his way through "I Touch Myself."

Like Neil, that scary fucking dude who raided Kathy Liebert's wardrobe for his audition outfit.

Thank God for the dominatrix chick who used to be on Barney & Friends or I might have just deleted all this dreck from my DVR straight away.

"If she doesn't make it to Hollywood, there's always the pole," said Pauly. "And she lives in Dallas. She's good-looking so maybe we'll see her at the Lodge."

The only reason I'm looking forward to next week? I hear everyone's favorite hippie orphan Rose Flack makes a return appearance at the Denver auditions.

American Idol Season 9, Week 2: Glitter and Be Gay

2010-01-21T11:52:00.000-08:00

Theo Glinton, ready for String Cheese tour

This week's double installment of American Idol auditions featured a black man covered in glitter, a chick who could flex her boobs, more sob stories and at least one arrest. You know, just another day at the office for Simon, Randy, Kara, and their rotating cast of guest judges. Those seats were filled by country songstress Shania Twain in the Chicago round and so-adorable-I-want-to-squeeze-her Broadway dynamo Kristin Chenoweth in Orlando.

Chicago wasn't too fruitful when it came to the talent. Only 13 Idol hopefuls earned a golden ticket and naturally, most of them had tragic pasts to go with their silken voices.

Poor little Katelyn Epperly's father left her and her Momma this summer. Momma always wanted Katelyn to audition for Idol and now that Daddy's gone, Momma's looking for a new meal ticket. After launching into a mini-therapy session with the judges, Katelyn tore up a Duffy song and made it through. Guess what, sugar. Your voice was good enough and you didn't need to take your Daddy issues national. OK?

Another one who didn't need the sob story? Paige Dechausse, who had an near-fatal asthma attack during a voice lesson at age 15. She sang Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come" better than I've ever heard a white girl do it and earned three votes with Simon as the lone naysayer. Again-- I don't care about your tragic past. Just fucking sing.

I'll also be watching out for 16-year old Charity Vance. The Arkansas teen works at the family hair salon. She even performs in the salon for the customers. Seriously, we're only one insulin attack and a grumpy dog away from Steel Magnolias here. But she can sing, and punched her ticket to Hollywood with a delicate soprano version of "Summertime."

The tragic stories didn't stop in Orlando. We met Seth Rollins, who has an autistic son. Oh, and money problems of course. Oh, and he's 28 so it's his last shot at this. As he talks to the camera the gloomy organ intro to Coldplay's overwrought ballad "Fix You" plays over his sob story. Once actually inside the audition room, he sang "Someone to Watch Over Me" and though Rollins can certainly carry a tune, he's no superstar. Despite his glaring lack of stage presence, he gets a unanimous vote into Hollywood (as the anthemic guitar-heavy bridge to "Fix You" plays in the b.g. Vomit.)

My favorite Orlando Idol hopeful had to be Theo Glinton (pictured above). With dozens of tiny mirrors and feathers glued to the right side of his face and a black and silver cape this dude was totally ready for Sting Cheese tour. However, after growling his way through Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker," he was tossed out of the room in tears.

Then, after a redneck was escorted out of the building in handcuffs for refusing to leave the audition room, an actual felon closed the show. Matt Lawrence robbed a bank with a BB gun and spent four years in jail. Now he wants to be the next American Idol. He turned in a decent cover of Ray LaMontagne's "Trouble"--nothing special really--but Simon Cowell dubbed him the frigging second coming of country music and he flew out of the room, golden ticket in hand. Now, make sure and call your parole officer before leaving the state for Hollywood Week. OK, Matt?

Next week, the Idol judges descend upon the City of Angels to pluck a few more troubled, talented faces from the crowd and from the previews, it looks like the guest judges will be Avril Lavigne and that chick who looks like Zooey Deschanel and sings the "I Kissed a Girl" song. Stay tuned.

Otis vs. St. Francis Hospital

2010-01-20T12:00:00.001-08:00

Last year, my mother had a heart attack. She didn't even know it was a heart attack while she was having it. She thought she had a respiratory infection and that's why she was having such trouble breathing.

My father called me that morning and told me she wasn't feeling well. He asked me to check in on her and bring her some lunch. The request raised a red flag for me. He wouldn't ask me to do something like that unless it was serious, so I picked up some food and drove across town.

What breathing my mother could accomplish that afternoon was pained and raspy. She could barely get the food down and eating isn't exactly something we have a problem doing in my family. I didn't know what was wrong with her but one thing was for sure. This was no freaking respiratory infection.

She and my father had thought about taking her to the Quick Care in West L.A. the night before, but knew the visit would cost them thousands of dollars with the shitty HMO coverage they had; the only plan she could get approved for after years of history with skin cancer.

I didn't give a shit. After offering to take her in myself and getting rejected, I implored her to have my father take her in when he came home from work. Then I got on the phone with him and told him the same thing.

24 hours later, my mother had a 95% blockage removed from her central coronary artery at UCLA hospital.

Almost a year later, they're still trying to pay for it all. Insurance covered some, but not all of the mid-five figures in costs they acquired. And insurance covers hardly any of the hundreds of dollars a month she has to fork out now for meds.

My parents do the right thing. If anything, they do the right thing too often. And Otis did the right thing too, almost exactingly so when he tried to pre-pay for his youngest son's birth in an act of fiscal responsibility my credit-rating challenged self can barely fathom.

Read Otis' story St. Francis Hospital: The Real Cost of Having a Baby and tell me you don't want to punch a bureaucrat by the end.

My country needs real health care reform, and badly. My mom needs to stop living in fear of losing the little health insurance she still has by getting sick again. And people like me and the estimated 25% of Americans who are freelancers, independent contractors, or part-time workers need access to the kind of coverage our corporate worker bee peers enjoy.

For the record, I have a lot of problems with the bill out there. Frankly, I don't think anyone should be forced to pad the insurance industry's already overflowing coffers by being required to purchase coverage from them (only to get denied for shit later, just like Otis and my mom).

But something needs to be done. Read Otis' post and see if you don't agree with me (and I'm sure you will tell me if you don't, comments are right down there).

PokerStars WBCOOP 2010

2010-01-19T15:21:00.000-08:00

I'll be donking it up. Hope to see many of my scribbling brethren there!

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! This PokerStars tournament is a No Limit Texas Hold’em event exclusive to Bloggers, you too can take part by registering on WBCOOP

Registration code: 383794

American Idol Season 9, Week 1: A Tale of Two Cities

2010-01-14T10:55:00.001-08:00

Atlanta's "Guitar Girl"

Boston and Atlanta. Chowder and Hush Puppies. Italian mama's boys and country bumpkins. These two disparate locations were the first stops on American Idol's ninth annual nationwide audition tour, where the usual dish of humiliation and ridicule seasoned with just a dash of real talent was served up to the Fox-watching public.

Every year I wish for the audition episodes to be over with quickly and 2010 is no different. It's not so much the mentally challenged hot messes that are trotted in front of the cameras for their dose of nationwide humiliation, that I despise. There's a fast-forward button for that. It's the sob stories. You know someone's heading to Hollywood if their (a) sick grandparent (b) disabled sibling (c) triumph over disease or (d) perilous financial situation gets a featurette.

In Boston, we watched 16-year old Maddy Curtis turn in a sweet, if nervous rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Halleluljah," but only after we learned about her two brothers with Down's Syndrome. Katie Stevens ripped the hell out of "At Last" but not until we heard about how she takes care of her Althzheimers-ridden grandmother. Some dude who got cancer at age 20 did a cheesy rendition of the Michael Buble arrangement of "Feeling Good" and got his ticket stamped.

Plight/disease/hardship + passable voice = Golden Ticket.

Of course we also saw a parade of attractive girls with karaoke bar voices get put through in Boston, but here are the people I'll be watching:

- Tyler, the drummer who fell out of a tree and broke his hands. He has a huge soul voice and teenage girls will fawn over him.

- Amadeo, the enormous Italian dude who growled his way through a Muddy Waters tune. Pauly wasn't as convinced of his roots-rock potential.

"He could play the bar at the Mohegan Sun on Tuesday nights, but that's about it."

-Ashley Rodriguez, the so-commercial-it-hurts Rosario Dawson lookalike who demonstrated some serious technique on Alicia Keys' "If I Ain't Got You."

-Leah Laurenti, whose clear, jazzy rendition of "Blue Skies" was right up my alley.

In Atlanta, we met Keisha the buck-toothed beauty queen, a singing cop, and "Skiiboski," but the one tune we'll all be singing this morning was brought to us by a 62-year old black man who was given a courtesy audition so America could hear what is sure to be a YouTube smash-- "Pants on the Ground."

PANTS ON THE GROUND! PANTS ON THE GROUND! LOOKIN' LIKE A FOOL WITH YOUR PANTS ON THE GROUND! Sing it with me!

The only two I'm curious to follow from the Atlanta lot are Jermaine (who totally killed that Joan Osbourne song) and the above-pictured "Guitar Girl." I'd like to party with her in the lot of a Widespread Panic show.

Next week? Two more disparate locales. The frozen tundra of Chicago and Disney-fied Orlando.

UPDATE: Of course, a "Pants on the Ground" remix has already hit the internets. Check it out below. RSS readers, you'll have to click through.

UPDATE #2: Less than 24 hours after the show aired, some contestants' criminal pasts are already coming to light thanks to the ambulance-chasers at TMZ. Apparently our boy "Skiiboski" has five prior arrests in the state of Florida and five mug shots to go with them.

Check out the Skiboski mug shots here.

Team Conan

2010-01-12T13:58:00.000-08:00

Jeff Zucker should be tarred and feathered in the middle of the intersection of Alameda and Olive for all of NBC to see. In Hollywood's latest gross example of failing upward, Zucker, by making a batshit-crazy TWO YEAR, "IRON-CLAD" commitment to having Jay Leno occupy five hours of primetime real estate, obliterated not only the 10 p.m. network television drama, but has ignited a late-night TV tornado that will leave nothing but broken contracts, and pricey eight-figure penalties in its path.

I'm on Team Conan. He's a smart, hard-working guy who uprooted not only his own family, but the families of his entire writing staff to make the journey west and helm the Tonight Show, an honor he had dreamed of for most of his life. Everyone in Hollywood knows what a colossal douchebag Jay Leno is. And even if Conan's jokes don't always soar, he deserves so much more than the bullshit NBC is giving him now.

"He actually respects the chair," Pauly said, referring to O'Brien's shot-across-the-bow letter to NBC.

O'Brien understands the roots and the history of the Tonight Show. He understands its place in the television continuum and doesn't want to see a mockery made of the show by greedy executives trying not to trigger contract penalties.

Check out Conan O'Brien's full statement here.

Oh and guess what? American Idol is back tonight. Though I've long lost the fanaticism I one had for the show, I still watch. And since this will be Simon Cowell (and thus, I imagine, the show's) final season, I guess I'll have to blog it. So stay tuned.

Christmas Decorations that Boggle the Mind

2009-12-26T16:59:00.000-08:00

Why is Santa carrying a decapitated reindeer head on a stick?

Why is this cat walking upright? And carrying a cake?

Happy Happy Merry Merry

2009-12-25T11:16:00.000-08:00

71,987 Miles

2009-12-07T11:49:00.000-08:00

71,987 miles. That's the balance on the frequent flier account I opened 11 months ago with American Airlines. And I still have two trans-continental trips and a bunch of bonuses still left to post.

That's a lot of time on an airplane. And I'm about to get on another. Crossing my fingers for a business class upgrade to go with the on-board wifi. Praying to whatever supreme being is up there that there isn't a screeching child sitting within five rows of me.

I spent the last week in New York City doing three things. Visiting Showcase, who migrated from West Hollywood to Midtown Manhattan last May, visiting Ben, one of my best friends for the last 15 years, and catching Phish's magnificent three-night run at Madison Square Garden. Coventry, of course has some excellent reviews from Pauly, Kid Dynamite and Mr. Fabulous.

I get only 36 hours at home to jam in a week's worth of work before I make the haul up I-15 to Las Vegas for WPBT weekend. I'll be at the tournament at Caesar's on Saturday-- get ready for Team Tao of Pot (me, my beloved, and Derek).

Whether you're venturing out on your first blogger trip or a seasoned vet, everyone should check out one of my all-time favorite Tao posts, Pauly's Bloggers Invading Las Vegas Tips.

I've come surprisingly close to breaking rule #20 in the past.

I'll see many of you this weekend. Safe travels, and don't forget to tip your waitresses.

WSOP Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack Ankles Harrah's

2009-11-13T09:44:00.000-08:00

Jeffrey Pollack introduces the 2008 November Nine

Pauly crawled into bed around six this morning and nudged me awake. Ever since Joe Cada wrapped the Main Event bracelet around his wrist early Tuesday morning, there had been rumors that a big story was about to break in the poker world.

"Jeffrey Pollack is out."

Say what? Sure I was already horizontal and only semi-conscious, but you could have knocked me over with a feather.

The poker media lost a huge ally today in Pollack. Say what you want about exclusive media rights and all the hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing that came with it, but Pollack never censored independent voices in media row, most notably my beloved and the Tao of Poker, but also sites like Wicked Chops Poker-- not exactly the type of guys who will sugar-coat a story to satisfy a bunch of corporate suits. These guys write about the Hooker Bar, "Ass Girl" and the real, serious degen-ing that surrounds the world's most prestigious poker tournament. Pollack didn't simply allow these outlets to function, he embraced them.

Poker fashion has also lost one of its shining stars. Back in April, I named Pollack one of my Top 10 Poker Fashionistas in a piece on PokerNews. I don't know how he did it, but the man always looked fresh as a freakin' daisy, even after a 20-hour final table. Seriously, I've never seen him look bad. His pinstripe suits were always pressed, and he made bold style choices with his pastel shirts, colorful ties, and coordinating pocket squares. I even composed a haiku ode to the Commish over the November Nine weekend:

Hair cropped like Caesar
Navy suit is wrinkle-free
Real men wear pastels

The WSOP will not be the same without Jeffrey Pollack. Who is going to tweet the "Song of the Day" next year, even if it is a rotating mix of U2, Coldplay and Steely Dan?

Fare thee well Commish. And best of luck. But as you well know now, in our game, it's not about luck.

Heads-Up, At Last

2009-11-09T22:22:00.001-08:00

"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:

WSOP November Nine Fashion Report

2009-11-08T17:29:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-07T11:49:00.001-08:00

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

2009-09-30T04:20:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-29T00:42:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-30T14:42:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-14T19:25:00.000-07:00

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.

Embedded With Hippies

2009-07-30T10:56:00.000-07:00

I woke up from a mid-flight nap just as we were about to touch down in Denver. After two straight years of heavy international travel, I forgot how easy a two-hour flight could be. Wake up in L.A. at 6:30, touch down in another time zone by noon.

When it came to boozing it up and partying down in Las Vegas this summer... I couldn't participate in very much of it. My schedule was punishing and when I did find myself with a few moments of downtime, they were largely used to suck down a bowl of Sour Diesel or to catch up on articles for other outlets. I returned home on July 18th positively exhausted and spent the ten days since attempting to recharge. I got back in the gym. I stocked the fridge with my favorite organic foods. I picked up my knives and cooked a few nice meals. I pulled bong hits and caught up on shows like Weeds and Entourage. It was refreshing to live a normal, domesticated American life again.

All that downtime served as preparation for what is to unfold over the next two weeks: my first Phish Summer Tour.

First tour, you say? Shamefully, yes. Though I caught about half a dozen Phish shows in my late teens and early twenties in locales like Tinley Park, IL and Irvine, CA, those were my workaholic years, defined by a cult-like devotion to producing musical theater on my college campus (late teens) and an equally cult-like devotion to working eighty hour weeks for peanuts on the lowest rung of the Hollywood ladder (early twenties). By the time I'd earned my executive stripes and found myself with more flexibility of time, thousands of heads were already washing Coventry mud off their boots and I'd have a long five-year wait before seeing Phish again.

So here I am in Colorado. We've loaded our bellies with brekfast burritos and a few hours from now, we'll be on a party bus headed up to Red Rocks for the first night of Phish's four-show run. Next week I'll be on the road again, on a 1,200 mile journey from Los Angeles, to the Bay Area to Central Washington where I'll camp for the first time in my 32 years. Pauly has painstakingly educated me in some of the finer aspects of camping, like pitching a tent and assembling a sun shelter. If you would like to wager on whether or not I'll end up sleeping in the car at least one night for fear of wild animals and little bugs crawling into my sleeping bag, feel free. I'd put that at about 4-1 right now.

As a special added bonus, I got a phone call confirming that I'll be taking part in what I think will be an exciting new project in the poker world. I can't divulge much yet, but I'm very happy that someone I respect immensely has put his trust in me and invited me aboard. For the first time in over three years, I kind of have a regular job and it is one that can easily fit into my nomadic lifestyle. Color me stoked.

To follow along with all our antics this weekend, check in with the Coventry Music Blog, where Pauly and the joker will be updating regularly.

You can also follow all of us on Twitter:

@CoventryMusic
@taopauly
@Neillybop
@change100

Now, as the joker would say... "it's time to WAKE UP and RAGE!"

Suze Orman Meets Dead Money Joe

2009-07-06T17:03:00.000-07:00

Suze Orman: OK, next caller. Welcome to "Can I Afford It?" What would you like to buy?

Dead Money Joe: Hi, Suze. I'm Joe from Rockville, MD and I'd like to play the Main Event at the World Series of Poker.

Suze Orman: And what does that cost?

Dead Money Joe: Ten thousand dollars.

Suze Orman: OK, Joe. Tell me a little bit more about your finances.

Dead Money Joe: I'm 34 years old and I take home about $4,500 a month. My mortgage payment is $1,200 and I have two kids. I have about $9,000 in credit card debt and I lease a Honda Accord for $269 a month.

Suze Orman: 401(k)? Savings?

Dead Money Joe: I have a 401(k) but it's lost like 40% this year. I had a savings of about $6,000 but had to use it to pay some medical bills.

Suze Orman: Hold on a minute. You take home $54,000 a year, you're in credit card debt, have no savings and what little investments you had tanked? Where are you going to get the $10,000?

Dead Money Joe: Well I won an $11 satellite on Poker Stars, which got me into a $160 double shootout and then I won two sit 'n goes and got my buy-in.

Suze Orman: What?

Dead Money Joe: Let's just say I won the $10,000 on an $11 investment.

Suze Orman: And you're asking me if you should go gamble that money?

Dead Money Joe: Poker isn't gambling. It's a skill game.

Suze Orman: I don't care what skills you have. YOU CAN'T AFFORD THIS, JOE!

Dead Money Joe: But there's an $8 million first place prize. And it's my lifelong dream. And there is so much dead money in that field.

Suze Orman: No, Joe. You're the dead money. Take that $10,000, wipe out that credit card debt, and you'll almost have enough money to make next month's mortgage payment. Next caller!

Base Camp Two

2009-06-18T18:35:00.000-07:00

While I'm on the road and awake in the middle of the night, I tend to watch some really strange television while trying to fall asleep in the dawn hours. Ice Road Truckers. I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant. Documentaries on the financial crisis. And those Discovery Channel specials on insane lunatics that climb Mount Everest. This morning, while the sun was peeking though the spaces between the blinds, I drifted off while our intrepid climbers reached Base Camp Two. They weren't quite halfway through their climb, but were still high enough that they had to dip into those oxygen tanks for a few hours a day.

That's pretty much where we're at when it comes to the WSOP. Not quite halfway there. We're in the thick of things. Nearly everyone has the thousand-yard stare. Those that are spending their nights trying to grind it out at the tables are telling their bad beat stories with a little more frequency and frustration. 4 a.m. feels like midnight used to, and thankfully, I already had my mental breakdown during the first week of the series, so I'm just trying to focus on myself and my own well-being as I trudge up the mountain. I cover two more events start to finish and then we're at the $50K H.O.R.S.E.

I've been climbing solo for the last two weeks, with my beloved off on the first leg of summer Phish tour, researching his next book. I'll admit it was difficult reading all his posts and Twitters from the road, clearly having the time of his life while I was stuck grinding out a paycheck at the Rio. But at the same time, those dispatches brought a smile to my face during some of the darkest hours in this building.

Check out the Best of Bonnaroo Twitters on Coventry to relive their adventures.

I also cracked up at this post Bonnaroo and Craigslist from Broseph, who pilfered through the "Missed Connections" section and uncovered some gems.

Pauly also has his Bonnaroo recap up.

I've downloaded all the Phish shows from Fenway Park to St. Louis and am slowly making my way through while cranking out articles and driving back and forth to the Rio. Today's selections were from the Asheville show, where they played a killer Divided Sky, but then went into some random country song about a cactus where Mike Gordon started yodeling. WTF? At least after that, they busted out with Bold as Love, which sizzled and made me happy, despite the bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-15.

For now it's another late night at the Rio, a $10,000 stud 8 or better tournament, and Dutch Boyd's tragic hoodie staring me in the face.

Tao All-Stars: The WSOP Fashion Report, Week 1

2009-06-05T14:16:00.000-07:00

I'm honored to be one of the Tao All-Stars at this summer's WSOP and just contributed my first of several Fashion Reports. Check it out.

***

I'm back working for PokerNews at the WSOP and so far, the experience has been more similar to the fresh hell of 2007 than the far more manageable 2008. Basically, the entire official live reporting team was thrown together only two weeks before the start of the series due to protracted negotiations with Harrah's/Bluff, and things are far more disorganized than they were last year. A smaller staff, everyone taking pay cuts (myself included), fewer days off and lots of housing and transportation-related snafus have turned us all into a grumpy bunch pretty quickly. We're eight days in and I already have the thousand-yard stare. To make up for the pay cut I took, I'm still writing three pieces a week for the front page of PokerNews so I can afford to pay rent on my empty apartment back in L.A. and my editor is ready to throttle me, as I've blown every deadline since I got to Las Vegas. Typically I get home around 2 or 3 in the morning and have another couple of hours of work, usually getting to bed around 5. Now I know what Pauly goes through every single night at the WSOP. It's not pretty.

I feel like I haven't seen anyone since I got here. I pass people like Al, LJ, California Jen, Mean Gene, and the PokerListings guys in the hallway and don't have time for more than a passing hello. I haven't had time for a single drink at the hooker bar. I haven't played a hand of poker or Pai Gow. I can't even think about squeezing in a friendly dinner with folks or playing a satellite to try and make a few bucks. It's all about just getting through the day at this point.

Sorry to be such a downer, but that's where I'm at right now. I wish I could spend time with friends, have a laugh or two, and enjoy a nice meal, but with the way things are going at the moment, it's simply not in the cards. And if this $10K Mixed Event ends up going four days instead of three... well, there goes my day off.

FML.

The Run-Good Challenge: WSOP Edition

2009-05-16T20:58:00.001-07:00

I've done abnormally well in the PokerListings Run-Good Challenge. I won the first Grand Final and was runner-up to Kid Dynamite in the second one. I actually think Matt Showell secretly named the challenge for me because that was exactly what I had to do to finish in those spots. Run-Good is populated with the cream of the crop when it comes to the bloggerati, including Check-Raising the Devil authors Tim Lavalli & Amy Calistri, voice of French Poker Benjo, EPT goddess Mad Harper, Jay "WhoJedi" Newnum, the Luckbox, Spaceman, Shamus, AlCantHang, at least one of the Entities that comprise Wicked Chops Poker, Michalski, and my beloved among others. The best part of these tournaments is getting to play with friends. There were many in the field I hadn't seen in a while and it got me pumped up for the impending poker media reunion at the WSOP.

My starting table had Pauly on it and that was less than ideal. Not because we were playing from the same location, but because that donkey likes to call me in position with junk and flop miracles, then run around the room crying "Ship it holla balls!" in a gleeful falsetto when I fold. In his recap on the Tao of Poker he described our starting table:

Seat 1: Mad Harper - Everyone's favorite British ex-pat living in Spain played "fast and furious" because she had guests coming over for a dinner party

Seat 2: Amy Calistri - She's been beating up the financial markets ever since she stepped away from poker, but not before she helped pen Check-Raising the Devil with the Poker Shrink and Mike Matusow

Seat 3: change1OO - Everyone's favorite Hollyweird blonde was living the California Dream. The tournament started literally minutes she came home from the gym and fired up a binger of medicinal goodness.

Seat 4: F Train - Former regular at the Blue Parrot games, he shed his suit and tie and left the mean streets of Brooklyn for Sin City.

Seat 6: AlCantHang - The walking party. The next incarnation of the Dali Lama. Flowing robes. Grace. Stunning.

Seat 7: Matt Showell - Everyone's favorite Mac Daddy. He schooled me for a bunch of Hungarian bucks in Budapest on an apple eating prop bet at 4am.

Seat 8: Your Hero - Your hero almost missed the tournament because of Big Brother Tilt. I was slightly paranoid about reading a controversial book in public in a coffee shop frequented by LAPD, who kept peering over at my attempt at opening my mind.

Seat 9: DrunkBlonde - Unfamiliar with this person. I'm assuming it was a bot. Long live the machines.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't last long in this edition of the Run-Good. I folded T-T in one spot when Michalski opened for 300 from late position and Amy Calistri shoved for 615 from the button. I had about $1,650 and put her on a decent pair or a big ace and Michalski on a weaker holding, maybe K-J, K-T, Q-T, or a small pair. With F-Train still left to act behind me in the big blind it was definitely a shove or fold situation for me because I didn't want Michalski to call. I ended up folding, not wanting to race with or be crushed by Amy's hand, but Michalski called, showing Q-9 to Amy's A-K. I would have flopped a set when it came down K-T-3 and turned a boat, but I'm still OK with the fold there. I think.

I met my end when I had about 13 BB left with the blinds at 50-100. The action was folded to me in the small blind and with A-Ko, I raised to 300 hoping that F-Train would shove on me. He did exactly that and I snap-called. I was in good shape against his A-8, but the A-8-7 flop sent me packing.

I promptly left the house and went to Sephora where I cured my tilt by spending more than $200 on makeup and skin care products. When I came home, Spaceman and the Poker Grump were heads-up for the seat. After a lengthy battle, Poker Grump came out ahead and stamped his ticket to a $1,500 donkament this summer.

There is one more Run-Good tournament next Saturday, where PokerListings is giving bloggers a shot at not one, but two $1,500 donkament seats. I'll be spending my final hours in Los Angeles before departing for the Nevada desert playing in that tournament... and hopefully faring a little better than I did today.

Congrats to the Poker Grump and many many thanks to those wacky Canucks at PokerListings for putting this on.

Change's Turkey Chili

2009-04-30T18:44:00.000-07:00

Several in the Twitterverse were curious about my turkey chili recipe. This is one of the few dishes I make that is both healthy and Pauly-friendly, though he complains about the size of the dice on my celery every time without fail.

For the curious and the rest of you, here's my ever-evolving concoction:

2 tbsp. olive oil (enough to coat bottom of pot)
1 package extra-lean ground turkey (about 1-1 1/4 lbs.)
1 small-medium onion, finely chopped
1 stalk celery, finely chopped
1/2 of a large green bell pepper, finely chopped
1 small jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
1 roma tomato, seeded and chopped
handful of fresh cilantro, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 can each of black beans and white beans
4 cups chicken stock
chili powder
cumin
cayenne pepper
salt

Coat the bottom of a large heavy pot with the olive oil and turn up the heat to med-high. Let the oil heat for a minute or so, then break up the ground turkey and add it to the pot. Season with 2 tsp salt, 2 tbsp chili powder, 1 tsp cumin and cayenne pepper to taste (I shake out about 1/4 tsp, but I like it spicy). When the turkey has browned and nearly cooked through, add in the onions, celery and green peppers. Stir it around and let the veggies soften, about 3-4 mins. Next, add in the tomatoes, cilantro, jalapeno pepper and garlic. Stir it around again and let it cook another 3 mins or so. Drain the juices out of the two cans of beans, then add both the black beans and the white beans to the pot along with the 4 cups of chicken stock. Stir that shit up.

Let the chili come to a boil, then turn the heat down low and let it simmer for about 90 minutes. When it's thick enough to your liking, remove from the heat and let it rest about 10 mins. Taste and adjust spice if necessary. Top with finely minced red onion, sour cream or cheese if you'd like.

In Memory of Justin Shronk (1981-2009)

2009-04-22T11:11:00.000-07:00

"When Patrik Antonius folds his cards, they turn into doves and fly away."

That's only one of the many "Shronkisms" that left me in stitches during the all-too-brief time I knew Justin Shronk. Without fail, every time I saw the guy, he'd make me laugh, make me smile, or even just play some random YouTube clip he'd come across that would brighten my day. This afternoon, I found myself in tears in Mar del Plata airport when I heard of his passing, and now, flying the red-eye home from Buenos Aires, I'm completely exhausted, but still can't sleep. I tear up every time I think of him and can’t imagine the devastation his family must feel right now.

I met Shronk at the Commerce Casino in early 2007. I was covering my first tournament for PokerNews, the L.A. Poker Classic, and had already heard a slew of hilarious Shronk stories from Pauly, who had just returned from working with Shronk at the Aussie Millions, where the now-infamous Vegemite Prop Bet had taken place. It was only last month that Shronk was up for “Best Actor in a Tao of Pauly Video” for that performance and he naturally launched an online campaign for himself, pimping for votes on the PokerRoad forums and getting his friends to stuff the virtual ballot box.

I got to know Shronk the most, though at the 2007 World Series of Poker when he was working as the Multimedia manager for PokerNews, shooting and editing video pieces and interviews. We discovered that we were both unabashed fans of writer Aaron Sorkin, who created both Sports Night and The West Wing. We’d constantly trade our favorite quotes from the show and one day I casually proposed a West Wing trivia contest.

“You have no shot. I’d smoke you!” said Shronk. “Dude, I’ve seen Two Cathedrals 60 times,” he added, referencing his favorite episode.

Shronk was not the best traveler and unfortunately for him, our jobs involved a great deal of it. Shronk wanted his American food, his American television, and the comforts of his own apartment rather than living out of hotels and ordering foreign cuisine in a foreign language. While on an EPT stop in Barcelona, Spain, Shronk was introduced to the ways of European showers— cramped, tiny, and often doorless. I can’t tell the story nearly as well as our former editor John Caldwell can, but let’s just say that Shronk’s first shower in Barcelona ended with a phone call to housekeeping to bring twenty towels up to his room to sop up the quarter-inch of water that was now sloshing around his bathroom floor.

A few weeks after Barcelona, we were wrapping up the WSOP-Europe in London. By now the whole PokerNews crew had been on the road for the better part of a month. Poor Shronk had sprained his ankle on an uneven part of road and was hobbling around Leicester Square with all his gear. Apparently he couldn't find a laundromat close enough to hobble to because in desperate need for clean underwear, Shronk decided to send out all his skivvies to the hotel laundry. That month, PokerNews received an invoice from Shronk including his laundry bill which came to 400 GBP. Yup, $800 to wash Shronk's shorts. We never let him forget that one.

Shronk's passing leaves a huge hole in the hearts of everyone in the poker media. I’m going to remember the guy who would hand me a memory stick full of episodes of Top Chef, just so I could catch up on the show and he could finally talk about it. I’m going to remember the guy who walked into an Australian liquor store in search of cheap vodka and bellowed in complaint when he saw the $60 price tag on a bottle of Absolut. I’m going to remember the guy who photoshopped John Caldwell’s head onto a photo of M.C. Hammer with the caption “Stop, Schecky time!” while John was en route to his victory in a PokerNews Cup event. And I’m going to remember how happy he was when he cashed in his first and sadly only WSOP event.

Shronk loved poker. He loved the game, the people who played it and most of all his band of fellow misfits who covered it. The great injustice of his premature exit from this world made me recall a scene he loved so much from that episode of The West Wing that he'd seen 60 times. President Bartlet's longtime secretary Mrs. Landingham had been killed by a drunk driver and he railed against God...in Latin... while standing alone in National Cathedral after her funeral.

"Gratias tibi ago, domine. Aec credam a deo pio, a deo justo, a deo scito? Cruciatus in crucem. Tuus in terra servus, nuntius fui; officium perfeci. Cruciatus in crucem --eas in crucem."

I sit here in shock, trying to think what the hallways of the Amazon Room will be like this summer without his booming voice, hilarious one-liners, and a love of the game that inspired us all. My heart goes out to his family and close friends in what has to be an unbearable time. Rest in peace, buddy.

Music Festival Style Guide

2009-04-13T07:38:00.000-07:00

I'm off to Argentina this morning for another LAPT event (and this time I get to go with Pauly!). So while I'm fending off crying infants on a crowded airplane, take a look at this piece I wrote for Coventry over the weekend-- Part I of Change100's Guide to Music Festival Style.

For now, though, excerpts from the Evita soundtrack fill my ears as I prepare for the long journey to Buenos Aires...

In Transit

2009-03-23T14:49:00.000-07:00

"You've probably flown more in the last eight or nine months than I have in my entire life" said my father as we careened down the wide part of La Cienega Boulevard that takes one out of Baldwin Hills and deposits them in the L.A. basin at 55 MPH (depending on traffic, of course). He had retrieved me from LAX after a rather pleasant direct flight home from Santiago, Chile.

I looked at the odometer on the dashboard of his eight-year old Infiniti G20. 108,000 miles in just under seven years. He'd logged enough miles on the L.A. freeway system to earn himself Executive Platinum status on American Airlines. I tried to multiply that into hours as I stared at the lines on his face.

Yesterday afternoon I landed at LAX again, after nearly 24 straight hours of travel from Punta del Este, Uruguay. It's roughly a 6,700 mile journey from Punta, to Montevideo, to Miami International Airport, to my door in the slums of Beverly Hills. Uruguay is one of those places like Hungary or Bangladesh or Guam that one never believes they'll visit. Now it sits on my list along with Chile and Poland and Denmark. Even Pauly cheekily refered to Otis and I covering the "LAPT Uganda" when in fact we were at a tournament in a picturesque South American beach town with Monte Carlo prices.

The frequent filer miles I earned on this journey pushed me over the mark for Gold Elite status on American. Between the miles logged on this journey, the one to Chile, and a couple of trips back and forth from the east coast, I can finally get myself an upgrade at least one way the next time I have to spend 14 1/2 hours in the air. Surprisingly enough, despite all the traveling for tournaments, I've never been an elite anything on any airline.

On this journey, we endured delay after delay. We didn't take off from Miami to Montevideo until 1:20 in the morning, and our return flight was over six hours late, finally departing at 2:45 a.m. Thankfully, Joe Giron, our talented photographer for the PokerStars blog, is like Mega-Platinum Diamond Mine Status and was cool enough to get Otis and I into the Admirals Club both times we were stuck in the airport. That place is like the antidote for travel tilt. Free wi-fi, nice leather seats, a beer or glass of wine before boarding, low lighting, no screaming children, and Greg Raymer playing $40-$80 Badugi in the next seat while I bubble a $27 SNG.

Then, you get on the plane. Back in steerage with the rest of the world.

An infant wailed for eight of the nine hours it took to fly from Montevideo to Miami. I'd sleep for maybe 15 or 20 minutes before being woken up. The Xanax flowing through my system was all that kept me from locking it in the lavatory. I landed in Miami at 10:30 a.m., having blown my connection to LAX hours before. I was re-booked on a 3:30 flight home but was desperate to make one that would take off at 1:20. After clearing customs at MIA, I booked it to the ticketing desk. At the entrance to the queue, I was met by a woman in a bad mood.

"I'm trying to get on standby for an earlier flight, can I do it here?"
"The manager says no standby today."
"Really. My friend just did it."
"Well, there's no standby today."
"You know what? I'm going to talk to someone else."

Good thing I did. After I explained the flight debacle from Uruguay as well as my newly acquired Gold Elite Status I was not only put on standby, but bumped up to #4 on the list of 21. All by finding someone in a better mood.

I was the last person to get on that plane. I had perhaps the worst seat, a freezing, narrow middle one in an exit row that didn't recline all the way, but at least I wasn't spending another two hours in an airport. Next to me was a girl who played on the Australian Womens' Netball team. She was only six hours into a 36-hour trek from St. Maarten to Miami, Miami to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Melbourne, and Melbourne to Canberra. I didn't feel quite as bad after hearing that, though my back didn't quite agree.

And when I walked through my door, he had flowers waiting for me. As always.

It's time to sink back into routine after the better part of 16 days on the road. Waking up at normal hours in my own bed and cooking dinners for two in the evenings. Shopping for fresh food instead of ordering off a plastic menu. Unfreezing that gym membership again and feeling the rubber-on-rubber pound of the treadmill. Hitting the keys at regular intervals. Pounding out articles, the clock ticking toward the WSOP and another summer in Las Vegas.

AND getting back to American Idol, if I can stomach it. (I have a lot of catching up to do on the episodes, but knowing that Alexis Grace bit the dust last week I have to tell you, my enthusiasm is down and my tin foit hat on.)

Phish: Reunited

2009-03-07T09:03:00.000-08:00

Liftoff inside the Mothership

The intertubes in our hotel aren't quite what they were yesterday, as every hung-over Phan in the building is currently downloading last night's epic Phish reunion show, which is available for FREE on livephish.com right now, Pauly included.

Pauly and the joker are blogging their ass off on Coventry and there are already all sorts of goodies up from last night. Check 'em out:

Phish 3/6/09 Hampton Live Blog
Friday Hampton Pics
Phish Setlist - 3-6-09 Hampton, VA Reunion Show
Phish Videos - Bouncin' and Harry Hood 3-6-09

You can also follow all three of us on Twitter for live updates throughout the weekend.

Follow Pauly
Follow Me
Follow the joker

Pauly was tweeting the setlist so fast last night he was actually beating Phish's official Twitter feed!

Another two shows await us. It'll be another long afternoon in line, but it's an absolutlely gorgeous day outside, which greatly pleases this Californian.

American Idol Wednesdays: A Blind Guy, a Puerto Rican and a Gay Meat Loaf Fan Walk Into a Bar...

2009-03-03T23:59:00.000-08:00

Your final 12 victims took the stage last night

This week we’re treated to a triple cocktail of Idol—last night’s performances by the Top 36’s final group of 12, tonight’s results show, and Thursday’s one-hour wild card show, where the judges will bring back their favorite performers who missed the cut when it came to America’s vote. I thought this group graced us with more quality performances than the first two combined. Sure, there were a couple of hot messes but I found myself pleasantly surprised by performers like Ju'not Joyner, Jorge Nunez, and Lil Rounds. So how’d they do?

Von Smith - "You're All I Need to Get By" Von had the unenviable task of opening the show and I thought this was actually an inspired song choice. . It was rangy, it let him belt a little and have some quieter, more emotional moments as well. There was hardly any sign of the crazy gay musical theatre guy that blasted away the straight-tone tenor notes at the first audition. Though I’m really not buying his whole “ZOMG I HAS NO IDEA I WUZ CLAY KLONE” routine.

Taylor Vaifanua - "If I Ain't Got You" Yeah, Taylor rocked the vocals on the chorus but there was something so vanilla and cabaret about the whole thing. She may have a standout voice somewhere in there, but didn’t give a standout performance. Paula actually pointed out something interesting in her pharmaceutical haze - Taylor actually sang this song during Hollywood Week. Now tell me something-- why on earth would you trot that one out again when you have the opportunity to pick any song out there? And wow is she tall… she dwarfs Seacrest like Jordin Sparks did two years ago.

Alex Wagner-Trugman - "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues" Dude… the dorky dancing, the faux-growl in his voice… I didn't remember this guy from Hollywood Week and I tuned him out after about 30 seconds of his schtick. I thought his whole neo-Joe Cocker thing was affected and stagey. That performance might be OK if it was given by Michael Cera in the second act of a Judd Apatow movie, but not on American Idol.

Arianna Afsar - "The Winner Takes it All" This poor girl was so far behind the band and never was able to get back on the beat. She obviously has a great voice judging by the few money notes she did get in there (though she cracked at the end), but this was a disaster of a song choice. I mean…when they cut to your parents in the audience and even they look like they know you fucked up, well… that’s bad. The judges were right on target, criticizing her dated song choice. It's a shame her performance was so dreadful because it's easy to see she has a really good instrument.

Ju'not Joyner - "Hey There Delilah" I kinda dug this one, dawg. There were some moments in this song when he was really moving and effective. Ju’not did quite well done. The guy whose cute kid got him the sympathy vote to Hollywood actually turned out to have some decent pipes. He could be a dark horse in this competition if he makes it through to the Top 12.

Kristen McNamara - "Give Me One Reason" Kristen is a karaoke host and after this we can really see why. Everything was wrong about this, from the song choice, to the little orphan Annie dress, to the affected performance elements. This is not a difficult song. I can get through it on key and almost remember all the lyrics even after five cosmopolitans. Memo to Kristen: If you have the voice to take on a big-ass song, why not do it? It's now or never baby! Unfortunately, I don’t think this performance will stand out enough to let her advance.

Nathaniel Marshall - "I Would Do Anything for Love" Crazy pierced emo kid hit the stage dressed like it was Saturday night at Limelight in 1987. It was all very weird and gay and retro-disco and odd. Kara did declare that he was "the guy I want to go to karaoke with!" Well yeah, everyone wants to go to karaoke with the weird gay kid, especially if he has good drugs. Don’t think we’ll be hearing from Boy George Jr. again anytime soon.

Felicia Barton - "No One" You’ve gotta love how there's no mention of exactly WHY Felicia ended up back in the top 36 after being cut in the final round of Hollywood Week (thanks Joanna Pacitti!) but lemme tell you, this girl has a VOICE. I'm down with the styling, I'm down with the vocals, I still don't really know what kind of artist she'll be, but it's a vast improvement over the last time we saw her. I don’t think she’ll bet the votes, but she could be a wild card candidate.

Scott MacIntyre "Mandolin Rain" I was sort of over Scott when he did Daughtry's "Home" at the piano during Hollywood Week. Yeah, he's blind and everything but his vocals just can’t compete with this crop of singers. I do think Simon is dead-on when he says Scott will sail through to the Top 12—the sympathy vote from kids and old people alone will get him there, but it won’t benpurely on the strength of this performance. Yeah, I’m picking on the blind guy, but c’mon, you’re all thinking it too, right?

Kendall Beard "This One's For the Girls" Kendall looked like a little yellow ray of sunshine in that dress didn't she? Too bad she ended up delivering a tight, scared vocal and a stiff performance. This was actually a good song choice for an aspiring Carrie Underwood like Kendall, but she just doesn’t have the vocal chops to execute it properly. Kudos for defining yourself as an artist, babe, but sorry, you don't have the talent.

Jorge Nunez - "Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me" Tonight's Randy Jackson "Blow it Out the Box" award goes to Puerto Rico's Jorge Nunez, who exploded said box with a thrilling vocal and a commanding performance of the Elton John classic that has become an Idol standard for guys with big voices. If Jorge doesn't go through after this performance, I don't know what the fuck is wrong with you people. PLEASE put him through instead of the blind guy! Viva la Jorge!

Lil Rounds - "Be Without You" After being compared to Mary J. Blige by Randy Jackson, why not sing Mary? Lil delivered a solid vocal and defintiely threw down, saying “here's what you're gonna get if you record an album with me.” What a way to close the show. Great dress, great styling, superstar performance. It's gonna be a horse race tonight, folks.

My predictions – I think Lil and Blind Guy are shoo-ins. The third slot could go to either Ju’not or Jorge.

Pink Uniforms

2009-03-02T17:24:00.000-08:00

In this photo:

* One is a Harvard Ph.D
* One went to rehab
* One is a Catholic school teacher
* One speaks fluent Spanish and Portuguese
* One is a high school principal
* One is an attorney
* One worked for NASA
* One is an ex-D-Girl now scratching out a living as a writer

Consider it my first-ever authorized internet photo.

Hollyweed & Vine: Your Wednesday Morning Linkage

2009-02-25T12:37:00.000-08:00

Since we have to wait another day to feast on the remains of the second set of 12 American Idol semi-finalists, how about some more linkage? Here's some of the highlights of my morning news-noshing:

The CW Greenlights 'Melrose Place' Pilot. I'm a closet fan of the new 90210 (did I really just say that out loud?) and will wait for this new hourlong trashy delight with bated breath. And the dude who directed An Inconvenient Truth is helming the pilot? What?

Studios Weigh Star Packages. In a shining example of recession-minded, risk-averse Hollywood, the two hottest film packages being shopped around this week to studios are an Adam McKay directed comedy starring Will Ferrel and an action flick starring Matt Damon scripted by Bourne Ultimatum writer George Nolfi.

NY Post Drops Liz Smith. Even the 86-year old gossip stalwart can't escape the budget cuts at News Corp.

Could Porn Payout Help Octomom Keep Kids? Vivid Video has evidently offered Octomom $1 million and a year of health insurance to do one porno with them. My favorite line - ""We've had many single mothers work with us over the years, and their income from Vivid has been very important to them."

Americans Growing Kinder to Bud? Fivethirtyeight.com's Nate Silver crunches the numbers and predicts that the tide of popular opinion that is swinging toward the legalization of marijuana will reach the 60% mark between 2022-2023.

Andrew Sullivan thinks we should Grow Our Own, which I have no problem with.

And if we all grew our own legally , the police wouldn't find shit like 500 pounds of reefer on Fabolous' tour bus.

And now, let's pause and re-live the Pineapple Express skit from the Oscars. My bowl is packed.

Taxing Weed, the Death of Defamer, and Oscar Night Blind Items

2009-02-24T14:38:00.000-08:00

* Seriously, God bless my home state. A state assemblyman out of San Francisco is arguing that in these trying financial times-- oh, let's face it, the state is BROKE-- California should move toward legal, regulated production of its largest cash crop. And you know what that is, boys and girls. Marijuana!

The proposed measure would tax and regulate weed in the same manner as alcohol, meaning you'd have to be over 21 to toke (as opposed to 18, the current minimum age for a medicinal marijuana recommendation). It could mean an additional $1 billion in revenue for cash-strapped Cali.

From the L.A. Times: Taxing pot could become a political toking point

* Defamer has been part of my morning reading since it came into existence, so imagine my shock upon reading that it was being folded into Gawker and would live on only as "Gawker's Hollywood Column." The domains have already been moved, defamer.com now re-directing to defamer.gawker.com.

Defamer: Defamer folds into Gawker; editors to pursue careers in bearded hip-hop

Change= sad

In their swan song week, Defamer did collect together some of Oscar night's best blind items from all the tabloids. Here are a few of my favorites. Feel free to make your own guesses.

"Which actor snorted cocaine in the bathroom during an Oscar after-party, while a slimmed-down stoner actor smoked pot outside with his pals?"

"It's too bad [the star] from above doesn't share the same dealer as this current C list television actress on a hit television drama who has B+ name recognition because they could maybe get a discount. People couldn't stop commenting on the track marks on her arms when one of her long sleeve tops rolled up her arm. When she discovered it was up she quickly put the sleeve back down and whispered something about medication. Uh huh."

Which Hollywood actress kept the Oscar ceremony seat warmer unusually busy with her frequent trips to the loo to 'powder her nose'? The poor man kept having to hop into her seat during every ad break."

"Which Oscar-nominated actress let loose a string of obscenities at one of the Academy Awards after parties? She looked gorgeous in her long gown, and simply glowed the entire evening. However, the party was crowded, and a famous actor accidentally stepped on the train of her gown. She let out a little shriek, and the man sheepishly apologized and moved his foot. Instead of reacting graciously to the error, our normally well-behaved actress tugged her train towards her and swore loudly enough for several people to hear."