I Run Good... Against Spaceman at Least

I'm relaxing on the balcony of my London flat, eating Thai noodle salad and waiting for Pauly to arrive from Amsterdam, after his flight was unfortunately delayed. Both of us are playing in tonight's six-handed Grand Finale of the Poker Listings Run-Good Challenge. Earlier this week, I duked it out with Spaceman heads-up to see which one of us would advance to the final, as we were both tied in points from our preliminary event performances.

I jumped out to an early lead in the HU match, courtesy of flopping two pair with junk hands on two separate occasions. From there I switched into small-ball mode, not wanting to get too out of line with marginal hands as I know Spaceman plays a very aggressive, often tricky game. It wasn't too hard to keep playing small pots when I couldn't flop a pair or even a draw, and my lead eroded a bit before I doubled up Spaceman when his A-8 of hearts made a flush on the turn against my K-Q. I ground up my stack a bit more before I shoved over the top of his opening raise with A-7 and he made a great call with A-9. We were back to where we started yet again. I managed to suck out spectacularly when I shoved with K-5 and Spaceman called with A-K, rivering a 5 in dramatic fashion to double up. The final hand came when I pushed with A-6 and Spaceman, called with J-T, having only 5 BB or so and despite him picking up half the deck in outs on the turn, I ran good and survived to advance to the final.

It was a challenging match for sure and Spaceman played great. It was also probably the longest $1 HU SNG in history, clocking in at 83 hands.

The Grand Finale kicks off at 11 a.m. PDT/2 p.m. EDT/7 p.m. GMT on Poker Stars. I'm also delighted to see that poker blogging women make up half the field, as I'm joined by two tough Texans in Amy Calistri and Michele Lewis. Rounding out the field are Poker Listings' strategy guru Dan Skolovy, Short-Stacked Shamus and the one and only Dr. Pauly. A $3,000+ prize pool will be divided among the six of us. Come rail and see if I can run good!

Jed Bartlet Meets Barack Obama: Aaron Sorkin on the 2008 Election

This is, quite possibly, the best thing I've read on the current state of American politics. Written by my favorite living screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin, it appeared in Maureen Dowd's column in the New York Times. In it, The West Wing's President Jed Bartlet gives Obama a little advice.

Aaron Sorkin Conjures a Meeting of Obama and Bartlet

The meat of it:

OBAMA What would you do?

BARTLET GET ANGRIER! Call them liars, because that’s what they are. Sarah Palin didn’t say “thanks but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. She just said “Thanks.” You were raised by a single mother on food stamps — where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annapolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I’d ask them what their problem is with excellence. While you’re at it, I want the word “patriot” back. McCain can say that the transcendent issue of our time is the spread of Islamic fanaticism or he can choose a running mate who doesn’t know the Bush doctrine from the Monroe Doctrine, but he can’t do both at the same time and call it patriotic. They have to lie — the truth isn’t their friend right now. Get angry. Mock them mercilessly; they’ve earned it. McCain decried agents of intolerance, then chose a running mate who had to ask if she was allowed to ban books from a public library. It’s not bad enough she thinks the planet Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago complete with a man, a woman and a talking snake, she wants schools to teach the rest of our kids to deny geology, anthropology, archaeology and common sense too? It’s not bad enough she’s forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage to a teenage hood, she wants the rest of us to guide our daughters in that direction too? It’s not enough that a woman shouldn’t have the right to choose, it should be the law of the land that she has to carry and deliver her rapist’s baby too? I don’t know whether or not Governor Palin has the tenacity of a pit bull, but I know for sure she’s got the qualifications of one. And you’re worried about seeming angry? You could eat their lunch, make them cry and tell their mamas about it and God himself would call it restrained. There are times when you are simply required to be impolite. There are times when condescension is called for!

OBAMA Good to get that off your chest?

BARTLET Am I keeping you from something?

OBAMA Well, it’s not as if I didn’t know all of that and it took you like 20 minutes to say.

BARTLET I know, I have a problem, but admitting it is the first step.

OBAMA What’s the second step?

BARTLET I don’t care.

Can I Run Good?

Over the last few weeks I've been participating in a very cool tournament series, sponsored by those wacky Canucks at Poker Listings. I was one of twelve invited bloggers to participate in their Run-Good Challenge, a series of four freeroll tournaments on Poker Stars where the top three walk away with free money.

Uh, yeah. Sign me up. Change= always looking for free money.

In the first week's installment, I played on about 90 minutes of sleep after staying up all night to cover a WCOOP Event. Naturally, I was Gigli, but Pauly came in second to the runnin' really good Dan Skolovy of Poker Listings, who took it down. Only poor Dan can't claim any of the prize money, so his $600 first prize was rolled over into the next event's prize pool.

I did better the second week, playing from Barcelona. I finished third, good for an extra $160 in my Stars account. Unfortunately, I knocked out Pauly on the bubble. He hated me there for a good three hours. I picked up a few points too-- at least now I didn't look like a total retard.

Third time wasn't exactly the charm, as I went out I believe in 10th when I tried a stop-n-go against Shamus, shoving on a queen-high raggedy flop with A-K. He called with Q-J and I was out.

The top 6 in points advance to next week's Grand Finale, which is conveniently (for me) held on one of my days off from covering the WSOP-Europe. I was sure I was out of the running until I saw that Spaceman (who similarly slept through Event #1 due to WCOOP vampire hours) didn't finish in the money in Event #3, leaving us tied for the last spot. We're gonna have to duke it out mano-a-mano in a heads-up SNG on Stars later this week to break the tie.

The other blogging luminaries advancing to the final include Short-Stacked Shamus, Dan Skolovy, Pauly, Amy Calistri, and everyone's favorite cougar, Michele Lewis who advanced to the final despite being temporarily displaced from her home by Hurricane Ike.

And... either myself or Spaceman. I'm comin' for ya Tennessee boy...

Thanks so much to the Listings guys for putting this on. There will be future editions, I'm told so stay tuned.

Happy Birthday Pauly!

It's Pauly's birthday today! Go stop by the Tao of Poker or Coventry and send him some love!

I'm so sad to be 3,000 miles away from him today, but I know that he and Derek have awesome plans-- catching the next-to-last game to be played in Yankee Stadium. I definitely wish I could be there instead of stuck inside a casino.

Happy birthday, love. I'll see you soon :)

25 Days

The Santa Maria del Mar church, Barcelona, Spain.

It's been a long time. Twenty-five days. Longer than it's ever been in this space.

I didn't fall off the face of the earth. I didn't disappear. I went to a music festival in San Francisco and a Radiohead show in Chula Vista. I covered the WCOOP on PokerStars and the fifth-season opener of the EPT in Barcelona. I flew up to London yesterday to cover the WSOP-Europe and moved into a sunny flat in Soho with Gloria, PokerNews' new on-air personality. I picked up groceries this morning at Sainsbury's. I am eating a baguette dressed with proscuitto and cheese and drinking a real Diet Coke, not that Coke Light shit they have on mainland Europe.

Which brings us up to this moment, but says virtually nothing of the last 25 days.

Pauly went back to New York right before Labor Day. I immediately flew into home-decorator mode the moment he left, finding myself in the aisles of the Burbank IKEA before his flight even took off. For weeks I'd been mulling over what to get him for his birthday. It's really a difficult task buying for him-- he's not so much the man that has everything, but the man that wants nothing (though the Bose noise-cancelling headphones were a definite hit last year). If you've read his blogs over the last few months you'll know that he's been in a frustrating place creatively, and that if he had one wish in the world, it would be to be able to go into a room that was his, close the door, and write.

So that's exactly what I decided to give him.

Until now, Showcase's old room housed nothing but a futon for overnight guests, a plastic set of drawers, and a portable putting green. Now it's Pauly's west coast office.


I assembled all the furniture myself, too. The desk was a breeze compared to hanging those curtains, which took three attempts and two different drill bits. I had to rush to get it done before leaving for Europe, but was thrilled with the results. I think he was too.

I test-drove the office while blogging the WCOOP over the next three nights. Though I kept vampire hours of the 8 p.m.-6 a.m. variety, it kind of helped put me on European time in advance of getting here. Also, it was one of the most drama-free assignments I've had in poker. Blogging a tournament where there are no railtards to trip over? And there are hand histories? I'll take that any day. It was also kind of fascinating to watch the entire final table of a $10,000 online event. These guys three-bet like I smoke weed.

I flew to Barcelona without incident. No screaming infants or foul-smelling seatmates. The hotel was modern and clean and close to the casino. TV only got five channels, though and one was Al-Jazeera. I knew my way around from last year and knew what to expect so I came into the gig pretty relaxed. That is, until I approached the casino on the first day. I saw Gloria, walking in a daze, her Blackberry to her ear, looking quite distressed. She had been robbed, her backpack stolen right off the back of her chair while eating in a nearby cafe. Laptop, money, passport-- gone. And even worse, the staff at the restaurant wouldn't do a thing to help her. As much as we tried negotiating with casino management, Glo couldn't even get inside without a passport per Spanish law, leaving her to take a taxi across town and begin dealing with the red tape at the U.S. Consulate. Fortunately for her, she got hooked up with a new passport right away, but it certainly left me shaken. That night, I locked my passport, all but one credit card, and all but 50 Euros in my hotel safe.

There were more than 20 robberies around the Casino Barcelona during the EPT, ultimately necessitating a press release warning the players and media. Guess the local thieves figured that was the place to be that week. While crime was flourishing outside, the conditions inside the casino had improved drastically from last year's disaster (wherein, your heroine was knocked off a chair by unruly drunken railbirds). Access was improved, there was more of a barrier between the rail and the media, and they opened the casino early for the tournament players and media so no one was getting shoved around in line by the anxious cash game players wanting to get their name in the queue as quickly as possible.

I had three days in Barcelona after the tournament, but was wary of hitting up certain areas of town, like La Rambla with all the theft going on. Turns out it was good I avoided that street, as a full-fledged riot broke out there my last night in town. I did hit up Barceloneta beach, as well as the Gracia area on the west side of the city, home to a lot of cool shops as well as the Parc Guell, designed by Gaudi. The architecture at the park's entrance is astounding and the steep climb up to it affords a truly magnificent view of the city.


I also re-visited my favorite place we ate last year, Celler de Tapas in El Born. I got those incredible prawns again, along with squid, Mallorcan sausage, and lots of other stuff my beloved would never eat.

Mainly, though I walked and thought. Sometimes with my iPod on like the locals, most of the time just listening to others around me converse in rapid-fire Spanish and trying to understand what I could. I contemplated my future. I thought about the kind of writer I wanted to become. I read most of this book Pauly had given me before he left-- The Artist's Way. It's kind of a self-help book for artists and is pretty damn brilliant if you can get past the God stuff. And if you're into God, well then it's totally for you. One of the things the book gets you in the habit of doing is writing three pages every morning before you do anything. It's supposed to be a brain dump, to get everything out of your head so you can focus on making your art, whatever that may be, for the rest of the day. You're supposed to do it longhand, but that's not for me, so I arrived at the equivalent of 1,000-1,200 words on the computer. None of it is meant to be read by anyone but you.

The more I wrote this shit out, the more I got into it, the more things I started to figure out by doing it, the less I wanted to put anything out there on the blog. I liked writing just for myself. I liked not having any expectations. I liked the silence. I had to take a break so I could do this again, and do it better than I have before.

"It's rough having a secret identity" I said to one of my colleagues.

It was cheeky and off-the-cuff, but the statement stung with truth. Putting your life out there on a blog is easy if no one knows who you are. Once those walls come down, it's much more difficult to remain honest. People fake it, people exaggerate, people write what they want others to hear. That's something I've never done, nor ever want to do here. I've built walls and moats and more walls still around this space when it comes to my family and some of them continue to find new ways of leaping over them. So it's harder for me to write about stuff like tripping on liquid acid in Golden Gate Park knowing my mother's going to read it and give me a troubled look the next time I see her. You'll have to wait for the Truckin' story on that one.

The Artist's Way lists twenty commonly held negative beliefs. "I can't be a successful artist because..."

2. I will hurt my friends and family
6. I don't have good enough ideas.
20. If I haven't become a fully functioning artist yet, I never will.

The good news, is I have put seventeen of those twenty to rest.

Still working on those last three.

It's good to be back. And if you stuck around, thanks.

Outside Lands/San Francisco Photos

I'm back in Los Angeles after five days in San Francisco, three of them spent at the Outside Lands Music Festival. It was one helluva trip.

A slew of new photos from the weekend are up on my Flickr page. Here are a few highlights:

Pauly & the Joker model their track suits. Mine was green with white stripes.

The Grateful Dead House

Buddha in Golden Gate Park

The Japanese Tea Garden, Golden Gate Park

Hippie Bus parked at Ocean Beach

If You're Going to San Francisco

The dog days of summer are upon us, and so is my last summer hurrah with Pauly, the joker, and Professional Keno Player Neil Fontenot. This morning we head north up I-5 to San Francisco for the Outside Lands Music Festival. I'm pumped to see some of my favorite bands like Radiohead, Widespread Panic, and Wilco right in the middle of Golden Gate Park.

For updates from the festival you can follow me on Twitter, or check in at Coventry Music Blog for reports from all of us.

There is no camping involved. Thank God.

One thing I will not be bringing with me to the muddy hippie fields is a certain birthday present I pre-ordered for myself several month ago. It finally arrived this week. Ladies (especially Michele Lewis), here's my stunnnnnning new Rebecca Minkoff bag, as worn by the attractive but vapid Lauren Conrad of MTV's The Hills. It even fits my laptop.


Enjoy your last days of summer. And don't forget about my banner contest! I'm still accepting entries!

Pot Committed Banner Design Contest

As I wandered the aisles of the Amazon Room this summer at the WSOP, I started contemplating re-designing Pot Committed. It's been three years, people hate reading text on the black background, and moreover, I'm just kind of sick of it. However, before I can turn this template over to a certain awesome freelance web designer, I need a new banner for the top.

That's where you all come in.

As I am far better with words and letters than fonts and Photoshop, I'm calling on the collective creativity of my readership to help design a new logo/banner for Pot Committed. If I pick your design, I will send you $100, via a Full Tilt Poker transfer, or a good old fashioned snail-mail check.

In terms of design parameters, I'm thinking of something (obv) that incorporates both meanings of the phrase "pot committed." If you watch the television show Weeds, I love what they've been doing with their opening credit sequence this season, with the pot leaf quietly growing to life in a corner.

Have at it, creative geniuses. Submissions are due by Friday, August 22 at 5 p.m. PDT. My deepest thanks in advance for your efforts!

Any questions? Shoot me an email.

Bleeding Dodger Blue

Life inside L.A. city limits so rapidly ages its inhabitants-- a rather ironic situation for the de facto capital of nips and tucks. The lines across my forehead deepen every time some jackass pulls blindly out into traffic, not noticing that I'm headed straight for his passenger side door. Or when I get two lanes of gridlocked cars to let me make that left turn, only some bimbo on a cell phone decides to plow her VW Jetta straight into the spot in the intersection that says "KEEP CLEAR" and stay there, as I sit, helplessly curved into opposing traffic while she texts the pretty boy hipster she met last night at Bar Marmont.

Millimeters at a time, those lines deepen. Today's three-mile roundtrip jaunt to the diner for lunch came complete with two near-death experiences. It's enough to make me long for the day when I make enough cheese to pack up this shitbox and move to a place where I don't have to drive. Like Manhattan. Or Amsterdam.

Of course, aside from the vehicular warfare in the streets there are many things to love about Los Angeles. Sun. Warmth. Beaches. Weekday matinee movies. Zankou Chicken. The Hollywood Bowl.

Dodger fans are not one of them.

Along with the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter," the din of lawnmowers on summer mornings, and the putter of my mother's yellow VW bug, Vin Scully's voice was one of the iconic sounds of my childhood. My father would set a small black portable radio up on the wall in the backyard and listen to Scully call the action of guys like Fernando Valenzuela, Kirk Gibson, and Mike Scoscia as he went about his weekend ritual of drinking a six-pack of domestic beer and watering the yard. I'd be doing my homework at the picnic table or inside at the kitchen bar and there was Scully's voice, omnipresent in the background as I learned long division, read Animal Farm, or made a papier-mache replica of Mission San Juan Capistrano.

Still, I've always hated the Dodgers, despite being a native of their city. My east coast-transplant mom bought me a Yankee doll during the 1981 World Series, and later, a Yankee Cabbage Patch Kid. That's really all it took to successfully brainwash me. My father was naturally horrified and proceeded to convert Mandy, all of two years old at the time, to his side where she remains to this day.

I love the Lakers, and if I followed hockey I'd like the Kings. I imagine if L.A. had a professional football franchise, I'd be a fan of them too. Just not the Dodgers. Never the Dodgers.

From 1986 on, my parents had season tickets to the Dodgers. I was dragged to many a game as a child, and nursed many a sunburn from roasting out in our field level seats. Sometimes I'd get so overheated my mom would buy those frozen chocolate malts and use them to cool of my face before we'd eat them. I was almost always on the verge of passing out by the seventh-inning stretch. Mom and I would wear Yankee hats and always root for the opposing team, much to the chagrin of my father and Mandy. Back then, there wasn't much cause to feel threatened.

Cut to: 2008. Monday night's game was a blowout for the Dodgers by the end of the sixth inning. Pauly, Derek and I were already talking about leaving. We'd had our fill of Dodger dogs and had enjoyed a few laughs with the four Phillies fans that sat in front of us.

"Conshohocken, PENNSYLVANIA!" shouted one of them repeatedly at a pair of Dodger fans behind us, referring to Tommy Lasorda's birthplace.

The pair responded by attempting to pelt the Phillies fans with peanuts. Then limes. Then beer cups. Only problem was, they were hitting us instead.

Derek stood up and told them to cut it out and stop throwing shit. Which only made them throw more shit. Half a beer hit me and I ducked as Pauly stood up. Words were exchanged. And then, out of nowhere, these two drunk cholos decided to leap across three rows of seats and lunge at Derek.

I didn't see the punch land, as I was busy ducking again. When I looked up, security was coming down the aisles and hauling one of the guys off. Then I saw the blood. Holy motherfucking shit.

As we climbed the stairs up the aisles, people actually started booing us. And throwing more shit. Real classy. I flipped off the crowd as blood gushed from Derek's chin.

Ten minutes later, we were in the security office waiting for the LAPD to arrive. The asshole who punched him was in custody under a citizen's arrest. Naturally, Derek wanted to press charges. After the paramedics put a stitch in his jaw, Derek and Pauly gave their statements to the cops while I waited. I watched a bumblebee slowly die on the carpet in front of me. Remarkably, as dozens of ticket-takers and ushers dropped off their equipment and clocked out after the game, not a single one stepped on the bee.

Here's L.A. justice for you. Drunk asshole punches you at baseball game with hundreds of witnesses. If you want to press charges against drunk asshole, you too must be arrested and deal with the ensuing red tape and the blemish on your record despite doing nothing wrong. That's a lot of explaining to do to prospective employers and/or creditors over one punch. Or, you can not press charges and everyone goes home. Those are the options offered to you by the Los Angeles Police Department. "We don't want to bother to figure everything out, so we'll just make it as difficult as possible for you to seek that justice you deserve, OK? Unless you're famous and this shit is going to be on Entertainment Tonight. Then we'll do everything we can and make sure to keep your publicist in the loop."

Derek's a tough guy. Pauly said he barely flinched when the punch landed. Though I'm not sure how soon he'll hurry back to L.A. after we put him on a plane home to New York with a sunburn, facial stitches, and a bag of antibiotics.

At least he enjoyed the weed.

Don't Forget--Tao of Poker 5th B-Day Tournament Tonight!

Just a reminder that the Tao of Poker 5th Birthday Tournament is happening tonight at 18:00 PDT/21:00 EDT on Poker Stars. Winner gets a $5,000 seat in the Borgata Poker Open! I will be there, as will many of your favorite bloggers including Al Can't Hang, Joe Speaker, Derek, Gracie, Spaceman, grubette, LJ, and Sir Waffles.



Check out the Tao of Poker for more details.

Set Code to Away

My parents hardly ever go on vacation. They made a couple of jaunts to Hawaii a few years back when the economy was better and air travel was cheaper, but they've otherwise elected to spend their leisure time closer to home, on one of L.A. County's beaches. However, with the impending closure of Yankee Stadium for new digs next door, my Jersey-bred mother wanted to take in one last game before its gates were shuttered forever. My father bleeds Dodger Blue and loathes the boys in pinstripes (a running theme in their 32 years of marriage) but loves my mother more and they planned a week-long jaunt to the east coast. After hitting up Friday's Yankee game, they'd visit with my mom's family for a few days before heading south to Asheville, North Carolina. My dad fell in love with the area when he was there on business a few years back. Ever since, he's been talking about unloading our grossly over-valued West L.A. home for something three times the size and one-fifth the price in the mountain enclave so they could retire quietly and comfortably.

Usually, Mandy would take care of the house and their moody, 12-year old cat while they were away. This time, since my mom had diligently checked in on my apartment and forwarded me my mail in Las Vegas, it was all I could do to repay the favor.

Thursday night, Pauly and I made our first trip over to the house. It's shady backyard was a welcome reprieve from my small, poorly ventilated apartment. He fed the cat and I grilled up some filets topped with Roquefort cheese. Polenta cakes and fresh asparagus also went on the grill for me, and for the vegetable-loathing Pauly, I sauteed some shiitake mushrooms and sliced onions in olive oil. The cat roamed the yard and we drank beer, smoked bowls, listened to music and played online poker as dusk fell.

The next night we aborted our plans to grill and decided to pick up Zankou Chicken instead. Pauly had been suffering all day since Google/Blogger's retarded bots had frozen his blogs and was preparing to move his sites if need be. He popped some pharmies and I drove us across town.

I opened the door to my parents' house and hear the familiar warning beep of the alarm, meaning I had 60 seconds to turn it off before all hell broke loose. I set down my stuff and went for the keypad. I didn't notice Pauly bolt for the back door.

Before I could enter the code and disable the alarm. Pauly opened the back door. ("I just wanted to free the cat!" he'd claim later) The alarm kicked off its deafening wail. Well, fuck.

I punched at the keypad in vain, but the damage was done. I screamed for him to shut the door, but he couldn't hear me and I ran out there to do it myself. The door was shut, and his face had gone white. I tried the code again. No dice. I didn't want to do it, but I grabbed my phone and called my parents. Before I could get two sentences out, the house phone rang.

"That would be the police. I have to get that, hang on" I said to my father, who sighed heavily from 3,000 miles away.

It wasn't the police on the phone-- it was the alarm company.

"Yeah, hi-- I'm these guys' klutzy 31-year old daughter whose totally faded boyfriend opened the back door before I could punch in the code. How do we turn this thing off? Yeah, don't send the L.A.P.D., everything's fine."

What ensued in the next half an hour involved a screwdriver, unplugging red wires and black wires, the use of a flashlight and a trip to the basement.

"I feel like I'm in Die Hard or something" I quipped to the alarm rep.

The Zankou Chicken was cold by the time all was said and done. I ate it on the picnic table outside, drenched in sweat after the whole ordeal. I gave a nibble of chicken to the cat, who was completely traumatized. Pauly apologized and I told him I wasn't mad.

Pauly, victorious in grapefruit tossing

Yesterday, we returned and spent nearly the whole day there. We grabbed breakfast at Junior's and played Saturdays with Dr. Pauly from the back yard. He was almost Gigli when he ran into set-over-set, and I lasted through about half the field before getting it all in with a Broadway straight on the turn vs. AgSweep's set of aces, but she boated up on the river to take down the pot. GG me. While Derek battled his way to the top spot, I played five HU razz SNGs (what?) and won four of them. Congrats to Derek on his second SwDP win!

We fired up the grill for dinner. Well, actually I did the firing, and gave it a little too much gas. The flames exploded in my face and I heard the sizzle of burning hair.

Thankfully, no eyebrows or eyelashes were lost. It didn't even hurt. However, a small swatch or hair along my forehead was completely singed off. That's going to be an interesting one to explain to the hairdresser.

Pauly made cajun-rubbed burgers with pepper jack cheese and I grilled corn on the cob and topped it with garlic butter. Yummmmmmmmo. Totally exceeded all expectations.

Then... there was the lime-tossing debacle. Pauly had totally crushed me at grapefruit tossing two nights before, and decided to invent a version of his "Inside the Limes" game that he and Otis had pioneered at the WSOP. He selected a diamond-shaped swath of the back patio and decided that if you hit a certain area with your lime, you won a designated amount of money. There were four large $1 sections, four smaller $5 sections, four even smaller $10 sections, and the center two bricks in the diamond were the $20 grand prize. We got two tosses a round. I also got to "shoot from the ladies' tees," a four-pace handicap toward the diamond (which became quite controversial later in the game).

I quickly jumped out to a $24 lead, figuring a way to bounce the lime off the lip of the fireplace so it landed in the $5 spot. Soon the lead grew to $44, and Pauly started mounting a comeback. He tried a little trash-talking when he narrowed my lead back to $29, but I wasn't having any of it. I hit two $10s in a row and was back up to $49 when he took a bathroom break.

After that, as darkness fell, it was just a massacre. I was throwing anywhere from $6-$15 a round and Pauly kept hitting donut holes. He blamed the low-hanging tree branch for interrupting the arc of his lime. He blamed the quality of the lime itself. He claimed my handicap rigged the game too far in my favor. Maybe so, but he didn't quit me until I was up by $153.

Commence mega lime-tossing tilt. A slice of chocolate silk pie helped abate it only a little.

I didn't last much longer after we drove home. I popped a muscle relaxer, having tweaked my back while sneezing in the shower that morning. The feeling that ensued was an odd sensation of being active in mind but completely useless in body. I fell asleep halfway through the second set of the Phish Walnut Creek DVD Pauly just got in the mail.

Tonight's menu included BBQ chicken, baked potatoes slathered in garlic butter, grilled asparagus and garlic bread, washed down with Stella Artois. We've definitely been eating well since temporarily acquiring a grill and a back yard.

I don't think I'm a very good cat sitter, though. She seems utterly depressed in my father's absence.

(For food photos of the above referenced meals, check out Pauly's Flickr page .)

Free Pauly!

Seriously, what is Google smoking these days? It ain't the good shit, that's for sure.

Last month, a slew of bloggers get booted from the Google search engines. Now, (Google-owned) Blogger is freezing sites like the Tao of Poker, Coventry Music Blog, and Al Can't Hang for being, of ALL things... spam blogs. Sweet mother of God what did they do to incite the wrath? Seriously, these guys have been providing us with stellar content for nearly 5 years and they're rewarded with this sort of bot-perpetrated anal rape?

Pauly is now in exile at Tootie's Bong for the time being. He's not-so affectionately referring to it as "his FEMA trailer." What sucks even more is that his fifth anniversary tournament is rapidly approaching and he'd, you know, like to pimp it on his own site.

I'm merely a drop in the bucket, but I'll pimp it on mine and I hope those of you with interwebs real estate will do the same.

Honest to God, one of the coolest things ever offered up by a blogger, all for his readers. $5 on Poker Stars to win a $5,000 seat at the Borgata Poker Open. Winner gets the seat, as well as his or her share of the prizepool-- all other spots paid out like in a normal Stars tournament. No chops. Must play. No shenanigans. Lots o'fun. And if you win, you'll get to meet my beloved in person at the Borgata. He's a pretty cool guy ;)

To all you Deadheads out there-- Happy Jerry Day. He had some cool shit planned for today at Coventry, but that will have to wait as well. Still, he Twittered a couple of Jerry Day Mixes that I'll pass on right here:

Jerry Day Mix, Part I
Jerry Day Mix, Part II

Tiffany Michelle Officially Joins Team UB

I perked up a little when I read Ryan's Twitter about spotting a woman whom he thought was Tiffany Michelle wearing a PokerStars logo at the first event of the Legends of Poker tournament series at the Bicycle Casino. He "wasn't 100%" though, and now we know why.

Tiffany Michelle has now officially signed with Ultimate Bet as a member of its "Star Players Team." She joins Cliff "JohnnyBax" Josephy and James "POKERPRO33" Campbell on UB's roster of recent signees, whom the company hopes will aid in rehabilitating its tarnished image in the online poker community.



For obvious reasons, I think this is a potentially catastrophic career decision.

Additional background on the Tiffany Michelle saga: Mo'Money, Mo' Problems: The Tiffany Michelle Story

The full text of the press release appears below:

UltimateBet's Star Players Team Turns to Hollywood for Newest Recruit

Miami, FL (PRWeb) July 29, 2008 - UltimateBet is adding some Hollywood star power to its already impressive lineup of poker pros. The online poker room today announced the addition of actress-turned-poker player Tiffany Michelle to its Star Players Team.

"From Hollywood to Vegas, Tiffany Michelle is a rising star in so many extraordinary ways," stated Annie Duke, UltimateBet's Cardroom Consultant. "We're thrilled to be able to bring such a talented force on board."

This 24-year-old actress and singer/songwriter has quickly become one of poker's most recognizable female pros - and it's no wonder why. The cameras were rolling at this year's World Series of Poker when Tiffany Michelle, the last female player left standing in the Main Event, outperformed her way to an impressive 17th place finish, beating the largest field to date by a woman. The Hollywood actress walked away with $334,534 in cash and was sporting UltimateBet gear as part of the online poker site's much-talked-about UB Army program. Tiffany has worked with some of the biggest names in Hollywood, appearing in a variety of popular films and several celebrated American television series including ER and Nip/Tuck. Tiffany turned to the game of poker to supplement her acting income between film and television projects and began playing poker tournaments online at UltimateBet to hone her game, quickly discovering additional success at land-based tournaments and in cash games. In virtually no time at all, Tiffany went from gaining roles on the audition circuit to gaining respect at the poker tables.

Tiffany Michelle joins two of poker's most revered online players-- Cliff "JohnnyBax" Josephy and James "POKERPRO33" Campbell--on UltimateBet's roster of high caliber players. She can be found playing online poker at UltimateBet under the name Tiffany M and will be featured in a variety of future promotions on the site. Online poker players can employ UltimateBet's free UltimateBuddy software to discover where Tiffany M is seated and instantly join her at the tables.

Campbell can be found playing online poker at UltimateBet under the name POKERPRO33 and will be featured in a variety of future promotions on the site. Online poker players can employ UltimateBet's free UltimateBuddy software to discover where POKERPRO33 is seated and instantly join him at the tables.

Little Earthquakes

The way the windows shook, I thought the #7 bus had roared past too quickly. The way they kept shaking, I knew it was an earthquake.

There hadn't been a decent shaker in quite a while in these parts. It seemed they happened much more frequently during my childhood. Those little four-pointers in the middle of the night or the early morning. The way the flimsy, sliding window next to my bed would vibrate with the tinny hum of metal-on glass. The way Mandy would sit straight up in her bed right when it started, her ocean-blue eyes wide like an animal's and how I would groan and mumble something about how it was so small it wasn't even worth getting up before rolling over and falling back asleep.

I was here for them all. The Whittier quake in 1987 (was sitting in the schoolyard, having just been dropped off for the morning), Northridge in 1994 (was asleep and mumbled something to my sister about it only being a baby one just before the ground erupted). Even the ones centered out in Lake Elsinore and Arrowhead. Through all of them, I was oddly calm. Even as our chimney sat in the middle of the street and shards of glass lined the downstairs hallways in the hours after Northridge, I was more worried about acing my Spanish final than the aftershocks that were hitting every few minutes. Eventually my father took away my books and gave me a broom.

"There's no way school's open tomorrow, let alone making you take tests" he growled as he pointed at an overturned china cabinet.

I was waiting for my Huevos O'Groats when those same fault lines that let loose back in '87 roared to life again. The front windows of the restaurant rattled, then the framed art and mirrors that lined the walls on either side of us. Every conversation halted. I picked my coffee cup off the table and took a sip.

"Is that an earthquake?" a woman squawked.

A little blonde boy, maybe seven or eight sat straight up in his wooden chair, his eyes as wide and blue as Mandy's that long-ago night.

"Don't worry, it's only a small one" I assured him, as the shaking subsided.

A group of tourists from Texas had just walked into the restaurant. Welcome to California. Aren't you glad you came?

"So that was your first earthquake, huh?" I said to Pauly. He nodded.

"Maybe a four-pointer, four and a half. All depends on the epicenter" I mumbled, taking another sip of coffee.

It needed sugar.

Drawing to Both Sides

At the dawn of the World Series of Poker, Kristy Gazes lived with us at Scheckytown for four days. She was supposed to stay the entire summer, but she ended up bailing after less than a week for new digs in a swanky condo on the Strip. I couldn't blame her for that, even if only for getting rid of that half-hour commute to the Rio. We instantly got along, though. Two native Angelenos with a penchant for poker and fashion? How could we not?

I learned a lot from watching Kristy this summer. She only played when she wanted to. If she felt tired or a little off, she wouldn't go to the Rio and muck her way through a tournament just because she felt obligated to. Her thriving second career as an options trader paid for that nice house in L.A. and her closet full of Jimmy Choos. Poker paid for some of it too, granted, but if she never picked up two cards again, it's not like it would all go away. She ate well. She worked out. She didn't give a shit what anyone thought about her. She had made the most money and the most consistent money from playing mixed cash games. A lot of Omaha 8 or better and Stud. She still wanted that bracelet badly, but quietly. And I got the feeling that if she did win it, or another major title, she'd kiss off poker forever and buy that ranch in Hawaii she always talked about, spending the rest of her life surfing and riding horses.

Kristy was always drawing to both sides of the pot, and it gave her a better life.

Maybe it was being around Kristy or maybe it was that post Lou Krieger made about online Omaha 8 cash games being poker's newest Lost City of Gold, but something compelled me to start playing some small limit O8 cash games on Full Tilt in the few minutes I would take at the end of each day at the Rio to unwind by the Scheckytown pool. Perhaps it was the late hour I was usually playing at (3 a.m. PDT or so), but it was impossible not to notice how fundamentally bad a lot of these players were. Silly mistakes even a below-average O8 player like myself knew to avoid. I'd also been covering a ton of mixed-games events, and when watching world class players go at it for 12 hours a day, maybe some of that rubs off. Over the course of the WSOP, I turned about $100 on Full Tilt into just over $500. And literally, every time I'd venture away from O8 to play a no-limit SNG, I'd end up cursing NLHE and all its reraising-from-the-blinds every-fuckin'-hand aggrodonks.

Since coming home, the only poker I've played (aside from busting out of Saturdays with Dr. Pauly on the second hand when my top set ran into Derek's flopped Broadway) has been O8 cash games. I went on a nice little heater and almost saw my Full Tilt balance reach four figures only to have the tides recede, leaving behind little of that newfound fortune. That's what I get for playing during those "Limit Happy Hours" Full Tilt throws several times a day and all the grinders show up to four-table it. But I did earn something like 2,000 Full Tilt Points. Only 74,000 more before I can get that flat-screen TV.

Perhaps it's effect of the gentler ebbs and flows of O8 on my fragile constitution rather than the choppy waters of NLHE tourneys. The point here, though is that I've taken Kristy's advice and feel perhaps more at peace with my relationship to poker than I have in quite a while.
Don't play when you don't want to. Don't play just to get unstuck, because you'll only get more stuck. Don't freak out if you lose a rack, because it's going to happen, just like winning a rack. Don't make winning or losing at this game your everything.

And always, always draw to both sides of the pot.

Man Bets Weed at Blackjack Table

Hat tip to Kid Dynamite for finding this gem. I fully expect this moron to be appearing on an upcoming episode of World's Stupidest Criminals.

Tao of Poker 5th Birthday Tournament

My jaw dropped when Pauly told me about his plans for the Tao of Poker's Fifth Birthday Celebration. A $5 tournament on Poker Stars where the winner gets a FREE $5,000 seat at the Borgata Poker Open? WTF?

Then, I internally wept a little when I realized I couldn't go for the seat because I'm going to be at the WSOP-Europe in London when that tournament goes off. Booooooo for me but yayyyyy for all of you because my dead money will still be in there. This should be a fun one and you don't have to write a ghey essay in order to win!

Hope to see you all there, and go to the Tao of Poker for more details.

Colorado Photos

After 8 weeks away, I'm finally home, on the comfort of my own couch, with the comfort of my own bong in my hand. It's a massive work catch-up day after unplugging for four days in Colorado, so here are some pics to tide you all over:

Hippie Shrine

The Joker and Pauly

Sunset over the field

Jerry lookalike

Flying Monkeys!

Hippie Sand Art

Things That Happened

While I was in Colorado...

I discovered hippie bars exist.

There are 5 of them and they're all located in downtown Denver.

I wished L.A. had a hippie bar where one could smoke pot semi-openly on the patio like those ones.

I met the joker's cat Emilio Estevez.

Like the joker, he's a Sound Tribe Sector 9 fan.

I nearly passed out from the heat during Steve Winwood's set at the Mile High Music Festival.

I also got buzzed off of a single beer due to being over 5,000 feet in the air.

But I saw some awesome bands too, like The New Mastersounds and Grace Potter & the Nocturnals.

I sat on the joker's porch while watching the nighttime activities of his neighbors... a black motorcycle gang called the Suns of Darkness.

We took a day trip to Boulder and visited Johnny Walker.

We talked about how happy we all were to be out of Las Vegas.

Speaking of Las Vegas...


While I was in Las Vegas...

My net gambling losses totaled -$345.

I was a loser at Pai Gow, breakeven at poker and a winner at Blackjack of all things.

I turned 31 and my blog turned 3.

My father got stung in the leg by a stingray while bodysurfing on Venice Beach.

It got infected and he ended up spending 4 days in UCLA hospital.

I freaked out a little because of the whole Crocodile Hunter thing.

But he's OK now.

My boyfriend totaled his rental car.

He then visited a sketchy doctor to procure Vicodin after the accident.

He then proceeded to write a lot about donkey blood while faded on pharmies.

That shit was hilarious.

I spent the majority of my waking hours in the Rio reporting the WSOP.

I ate less bad food from the Poker Kitchen this year, but many more chocolate chip pancakes.

I missed the Tilted Kilt. Nothing could replace it this year.

I got to live-blog the final table of the $50K H.O.R.S.E. and the final table bubble of the Main Event.

That was intense and exhausting, but pretty damn cool at the same time.

Some fourth-rate hack ripped off my live reporting blogs for her own column multiple times because she was too lazy to put in the hours at the Rio.

She and her idiot friends subsequently banded together and emailed my editor about a fashion report I wrote criticizing Nancy Todd Tyner's (hideous) clothing and makeup choices.

He didn't really give a shit. And they won't ever get the joke.

She was eventually fired.

I swam in the Scheckytown pool four times.

I sat in the jacuzzi zero times.

I won about $400 playing $2-$4 Omaha 8 or better online while sitting in the backyard in the dark.

I hit a lot of draws.

I beat Guitar Hero on Easy.

I was about to beat Guitar Hero on Medium when it disappeared from Scheckytown to be auctioned off for charity.

I got Guitar Hero elbow at least twice.

I Googled it and it is an actual medical condition.

I got a gig covering the EPT-Barcelona and the WSOP-Europe.

I'm psyched for another European trip.

But there's still four more cities to go before I get there.

Mo' Money, Mo' Problems: The Tiffany Michelle Story

Tiffany Michelle, playing on Day 7 of the 2008 WSOP Main Event

What was supposed to be the best day of Tiffany Michelle's life turned out to be one of the worst.

Returning to the Rio for Day 7 of the WSOP Main Event, all eyes were on Tiffany-- not just because she had gone to bed the night before third in chips in poker's premiere event, not because she was the only woman (and a young, attractive, and articulate one at that) remaining among the final 27 players, and not because she was poised to break a slew of records that day for women in poker.

No, everyone in the media was lurking around her table at the start of play on Day 7, myself included, to see what logo or logos she'd be wearing. As everyone's favorite internet doctor wrote the night before on the Tao of Poker while I slept off that day's 14-hour shift at the Rio, "Tiffany Michelle's breasts had become a battleground."

Would it be UB or Stars? Stars or UB? Who would cough up the most dough? Who would promise her the world in terms of sponsorship, tournament buy-ins, publicity, and free international travel? Or would Full Tilt or Bodog come up the middle with a last-minute offer that just blew everyone else's out of the water?

As we all know by now, Tiffany took her seat only minutes before the start of play wearing one Ultimate Bet logo on her right shoulder, another on the front of her hat, and a PokerNews patch on her left shoulder. And on any other day over the course of the last five years, this probably wouldn't have mattered at all.

The night before, as I sat freezing underneath an air conditioning vent in the Amazon Room, my hoodie zipped up to my neck and my teeth chattering, I read Nat Arem's explosive post, revealing that one of Ultimate Bet's confirmed superuser accounts was registered to a Las Vegas address belonging to Russ Hamilton-- the 1994 WSOP Main Event champion and a principal at UB. I had just heard Annie Duke's interview on Poker Road Radio the day before, where she basically ran over everyone's questions and played the apologist for UB... albeit in a very convincing manner. Annie is an intelligent woman and has a serious investment to protect in terms of the UB brand, along with her own reputation within the industry.

At this point, Tiffany had been wearing a UB logo for about two days along with the PokerNews logo she had worn since Day 1, which she was contracted to wear per her backing agreement.

Jeffrey Lisandro, one of Tiffany's backers, had been hovering around the Amazon Room all day on Day 6. The other, PokerNews owner Tony G., had already left Las Vegas several days prior. The UB scandal was blowing up, and so was Tiffany's chip count. Personally, I was concentrated on the task at hand-- reporting the tournament-- but couldn't help but notice all the little side conversations that were taking place in the empty back quadrant of the room, which, until only 48 hours prior, had been a sea of poker tables. PokerNews people and Tiffany's agent, Katie Lindsay. PokerNews people and other agents. And Lisandro himself, putting his arm around Lindsay and walking off with her to have a private discussion. The war over Tiffany Michelle was in full swing as she sat 100 yards away, propped up on her knees, playing in the biggest game of her life.

I spent 8 years in the Hollywood machine and dealt with a lot of agents in my time. They are some of the most ruthless, yet sickeningly hardworking people you will ever meet. The client's interest is your interest, and it is the only interest. Everyone else can go fuck themselves. Agents can piss people off and get away with it because they hold the keys to the castle by controlling the talent. Talent is the only real currency in Hollywood. Producers, financiers, studio executives, marketing divisions, publicists? Without the talent what do they have?

The genesis of Tiffany Michelle's poor handling of her sponsorship deals came with her choice of agent. Tiffany's agent is a young woman named Katie Lindsay, who recently set up a shop called Suited Connections. She is the "President and Director of Player Relations" as well as the agency's solo practitioner. According to the website, her clients include Bryan Devonshire, Alec "traheho" Torelli, Peter "number1pen" Neff and Adam "Roothlus" Levy. Katie has been around the poker world for a few years, primarily writing quote-laden player interviews for magazines like Poker Pro and websites like (the Tony G-owned) PokerWorks. Like Tiffany, she lives in Los Angeles and the two run in the same circle of friends. I do not know Katie personally, nor do I know exactly when exactly she began representing Tiffany.

The deeper Tiffany Michelle got in the Main Event, the more Katie Lindsay got in over her head. The more Katie Lindsay got in over her head, the more people tried to encroach on that agent-client relationship. To put it in Hollywood terms, let's say Tiff had just booked a series regular role on an NBC sitcom but was still represented by a one-man firm in the Valley. The minute that news gets out, bigger and better agents are going to target her. And then her decision becomes-- do I be loyal and stay with my friends/the people that supported me since day one? Or do I ditch them in favor of someone who really knows how to advance my career?

This was Tiffany Michelle's one shot. But it was also Katie Lindsay's shot. And a shot for "Hollywood" Dave Stann, her boyfriend of several years, who represents the UB brand on its "Ultimate Blackjack Tour"(founded and run by Russ Hamilton) Stann also recently appeared on the Fox Sports Net program "The Best Damn Poker Show" starring UB spokespeople Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke.

It's no secret that Stann is close friends with Duke. Duke herself has written on her personal blog numerous times about socializing working out with, and doing master cleanses with Stann in Los Angeles.

Ultimate Bet. Annie Duke. Dave Stann. For the two of them, there is a brand, personal reputations, and untold sums of money to protect here. Tiffany Michelle allowed herself and her impending public visibility to be used by two people close to her to protect their business interests.

Which leads me to ask this question-- how major of a role did Annie Duke play in this whole saga? She was in communication with representatives from PokerNews according to The G himself on his personal blog (bold emphasis mine):

"I keep wondering how Katie, Tiff’s agent, would even consider doing this deal with Tiff and how Tiff would not think that her first responsibility for advice and planning should come from PokerNews. I had been working on putting a deal together for Tiff with PokerStars and they had just emailed me. I knew Tiff could become a huge star and I was going to allow her to do a deal that would protect PokerNews also for the main event. We had it all set with PokerStars and she was going to get millions out of it with at least $1M in buy-ins no matter where she finished in the main event. I know that with UB she did not even get a signed contract and I believe Tiff’s agent does not have any direct contacts with big sites and UB was her agent’s only choice. We asked Annie Duke to get Tiff to pull the gear and Annie agreed. And then Tiff came out with the UB logos all over her for the final devastating day of her main event. UB said that Tiff chose to wear it."

What on God's green Earth makes anyone turn down that kind of deal with PokerStars, a site that boasts a spotless reputation, in favor with any deal with Ultimate Bet on the very day one of its officers has been implicated in the largest cheating scandal ever to hit online poker AND after one of the primary parties facilitating that deal gives her permission to walk away from it? It absolutely boggles my mind.

But when friends, and even lovers are involved, this suddenly starts sounding like the plot of a bad chick lit. Should I be loyal to my friends (even if they're on a sinking ship)? Or sell out to the highest bidder?

No one has, or ever will get rich from poker tournament reporting. Tiffany Michelle and I could both tell you that. And if you're from somewhere like Los Angeles, where the cost of living is through the roof, at times it's barely enough to get by. Us media types work gig-to-gig and with all the exclusive media contract shenanigans that have happened over the last year, we've all lost work. I'm really lucky to be one of the few U.S.-based reporters out there that has been able to keep getting steady work, not to mention amazing travel opportunities. But we're all far from wealthy.

I've been mentally putting myself in Tiffany's shoes for the last 48 hours. I've tried to imagine it. Getting backed into the Main Event by my employer. Surprising everyone by making it to Day 2. And Day 3. And making the money. And amassing a huge stack on Days 4 and 5. People in the media hypothesizing about how making the final table would not only be great for women, but for the poker world as a whole. Reading about all of this, or if not reading it, being told. Hearing whispers. It was impossible not to sense it if you were in the Amazon Room that day.

And then, getting money thrown at you. The kind of money you've really never seen before.

I heard figures starting at anywhere from $10,000-$15,000 for Tiffany to wear the UB logos on Day 5. That's in line with a typical sponsorship deal with an online poker site. These deals also include escalating bonuses if one makes the ESPN featured table, the final table, or if they win. Bonuses for winning are $1 million or more. When you're in the money for about $50,000 or so, but are only getting a third of it due to your backing arrangement, there's not a ton left over. So the hat and shirt money really does matter. At that stage, it's going to double or even triple your take after taxes.

But, as fate would have it, the biggest bombshells about the Ultimate Bet cheating scandal dropped right as Tiffany Michelle was being miked up for the cameras on the featured table on Day 6 of the WSOP Main Event...all while wearing two Ultimate Bet logos. For anyone else, it might not have been as big of a deal. If an unknown player with her stack size wanted to dump UB and slap on Stars, it could be as simple as giving UB back their money and getting a new check from their new sponsor. But Tiffany was not an unknown player. After Mike Matusow busted in 30th place, Tiffany was arguably the player of most interest remaining in the field. She was a young, attractive, articulate, and camera-savvy woman among a field of relatively anonymous, 20 and 30-something men. Everyone was watching her now. The pressure was on.

Tiffany chose to stick with her friends. And by friends, I mean "Hollywood" Dave Stann, Katie Lindsay, and Annie Duke. This decision could literally cost her millions.

Only hours after she busted out in 17th place, PokerNews issued an official statement regarding Tiffany's appearance at the Main Event. I was at the ESPN Featured Table, covering the final 10 players when the statement hit the front page of PokerNews. It rattled me, but I had to forget about it and push through to finish the task at hand. Getting to the final table. The "November Nine" or whatever the hell you want to call it. I felt like the strong wording was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction on the part of the author or authors, and I couldn't believe it came out then, during the bell lap of the WSOP.

Tiffany went on PokerRoad Radio on July 15 to explain why she elected to stay with UB.

"Early on as I kind of started doing well, they were the first and only site that was interested in throwing something on me and I think a lot of people don't know the inner workings, all of the things that went on. It's easy to have sites jump out of the woodwork when cash symbols start popping up above my head, when I start making it deep... and I just have to say early on, way before patches were even issued they said 'You know what, yeah, we want to throw a patch on you and we want to start talking.' So I had to respect and honor that out of everybody else, they were the first ones that were there and they were so supportive all along. As you guys know, when things started getting deep... the business, weird pressure, just everything started coming out of the woodwork, they personally stepped up and were so behind me and handled so much drama for me and they were, I felt, like the only ones saying 'You know what, guys? Tiffany is in the middle of the World Series of Poker Main Event-- back off! She has really important stuff to do.' When all these other people are trying to get in for their own personal gain, they were ones that just said 'We'll take care of everything, play your game and do well, this is awesome for you and enjoy it.' And that meant the world to me. I know so much stuff has gone down. Let the past be the past. I understand people are going to be upset about stuff but on a personal level, I was humbled and could not believe what respect they showed me as a person and as a player to just say "We want to handle everything else for you so you personally can do your best in this event and that was huge for me."

When asked by Court Harrington if the current UB scandals influenced her decision to remain with the brand, Tiffany replied:

"Ultimately, what's happened has happened. The people that I have dealt with and how they have dealt with me-- I have so much respect. It's hard, because obviously everyone hears in the media what's going on, but you don't hear some of the shady stuff that goes on with the other poker sites. When players start doing well, and the bidding wars and how people treat you-- that's not in the media. I got to see that on a first-hand experience what went down behind the scenes and I had respect for how they treated me, so I can only go with my convictions with early on what happened. It would have been easy to jump ship, it would have been easy to get outbid, and go with a higher dollar figure, it would have been so easy. I honored my commitments and I felt like you know, regardless of what anyone else says, stuff happens, that's really in the past and I can only go for how I was treated and it meant the world to me."

Tiffany Michelle had the heartbreaking misfortune of getting- and taking- bad advice from people she cared about personally while she was playing on the biggest stage in poker. I say heartbreaking because I know Tiffany. She's a sweet girl, a really lovely person who has always been a bright spot in the poker media and I'd have loved to see nothing more than her becoming a huge star from this. However, the best path to her doing that would be to have dumped Katie Lindsay, called up Tony G, and taken that PokerStars deal. She could be playing the circuit for the next few months, seeing Europe for free via the EPT, and increasing her visibility right before the Main Event airs on ESPN.

Instead, who knows what will happen with regard to Ultimate Bet in the interim. And there she'll be, wearing their logo just as the cheating scandal hits 60 Minutes.

Disclaimer/Stipulation: I am not an officer of PokerNews.com, but have worked for them as a freelance writer and tournament reporter for nearly two years. These opinions are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of PokerNews.com.

Tiffany Michelle Going Deep in the WSOP Main Event

Tiffany Michelle and her 3.3 million in chips

My PokerNews colleague, the positively fabulous Tiffany Michelle is currently third in chips with 93 players remaining in the WSOP Main Event. Hailing from Los Angeles, CA just like your humble hostess, Tiff has spent the day under the lights at the Bluff Feature Table, just outside the ESPN main stage. With over 3.3 million in chips as we return from the Day 5 dinner break, she's one of only two women remaining in the tournament. Closely sweating Tiffany is the 2007 Main Event's longest-lasting woman, her good friend Maria Ho.

A little-known fact about Tiffany-- she's a certified massage therapist. Many times this summer, she's found me hunched over my laptop and stopped to work the knots out of my shoulders. When Pauly pulled a muscle in his arm, rendering it essentially useless while in the middle of reporting the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo, Tiff worked on it tirelessly, enabling him to at least function.

Here's wishing Tiffany continued good luck, and for updates on her progress, head over to PokerNews.

(Photo courtesy of PokerNews)

The Barometer

It's the first night in weeks when it's felt nice to sit outside. The outdoors has been an inferno only tolerated in minutes-long doses and the walk across the virtual skillet that the Rio parking lot becomes in the daylight hours has been, again, the worst part of each one of the string of identical days I've lived since last posting on this space.

Get up. Throw self in shower. Get dressed. Eat pancakes. Drive to the Rio. Work. Eat Dinner. Work. Drive home. Rip bong hits. Sleep. Repeat.

When I open the door to my car, the heat slaps me in the face like opening an oven door. It's too hot to get in immediately. When I touch the seatbelt to fasten it, my fingers sting against the scorching metal. The A/C must cool the wheel before I attempt to grip it. And in the five minutes it takes the car to cool down to a manageable level of air temperature, the shower I just took is rendered moot.

So sitting out here tonight, next to the pool with my bong and my laptop and the wind in my hair is nice. My time at Scheckytown has really made me miss living in a house after spending the last 13 years or so moving from shitty apartment to shitty apartment.

But God almighty, do I miss my shitty apartment.

I started to want to go home about three days ago. It was the fourth Day 1 of the Main Event. That's well over 48 hours spent in the Amazon Room in four days witnessing the same poker cliches over and over again. Bad plays. Huge crowds. Idiots celebrating their suckouts. All those thousand-yard stares on the faces of the early bustouts. How could I blow ten grand so quickly, and how am I going to tell people about it? Those same guys, five minutes later on their cell phones, trying to explain to the person on the other end how they got it in with the best of it and still lost. No new house. No early retirement. No quick fix. I'm sorry, honey.

A few nights ago, I was having a drink with Pauly and Iggy, who had just made Day 2 of the Main Event. Before arriving in Vegas, Iggy had written about all the drama he went through getting his buy-in wired to the Rio. Bottom line was, he wasn't going to get the cash off Poker Stars quickly enough, so he had to front the money himself. Iggy had the means to do that, so after mucking through the red tape, he was able to take care of it.

"That should be the barometer" I mused aloud. "If you are financially comfortable enough to be able to take out ten grand out of the bank and front it for the Main Event, even if you won your seat, you should be here. Everyone else should have kept the money."

That's what I think about when I hear these guys on cell phones in the hallway, as they get their wives and girlfriends on the phone and lead off with something like "Well, I had pocket aces..." They should have kept the money. I think about those women on the other end of the phone and imagine what is going through her mind.

"That $10,000 could have paid off our Visa bill. That $10,000 is five mortgage payments. That $10,000 could pay our kid's tuition."

Most of these guys shouldn't be here. But they are, and that's what makes the modern-day Main Event so damned lucrative. One shot, one roll, one double-down. One turn of a card. Everyone can dream. Until those chips are shipped across the table, and they're forced to emerge from the fog of the tournament and the haze that hangs over the Las Vegas Valley and wake up to their real lives. Oh my God. It's over. I'm no different. I'm no richer. There's a dent in my pocket and a hole in my soul. I feel like shit. What the fuck do I tell my wife? And where's the nearest bar?

Seven days of play have been completed in the Main Event, and yet we're only closing out Day 3. I also had no idea what day of the week it was until I just looked at the calendar on my laptop. And only hours ago, Iggy cashed in the Main Event, earning himself at least a $21,000 return on his $350 satellite investment. My heart bursts with pride at his achievement. Congratulations, my friend. Tight, solid, calculated, patient poker pays off.

Four more days. But at least everyone who sits back down tomorrow is guaranteed to walk out with some cash. And the race to the next bubble begins... the final table bubble. Easily the largest monetary bubble in poker history when it comes to fame and endorsements. The tenth-place guy isn't getting signed as a Full Tilt Pro. The tenth-place guy isn't going to be on David Letterman. The tenth-place guy isn't going to get a warm and fuzzy bio segment on ESPN. The tenth place guy is getting over $591,000 and an ache in his stomach that may never go away.

Thank you, readers for visiting Pot Committed. We're three years old this week and still smokin'.

Collision and Citation

I was lying across my bed writing my Bluff column and playing Omaha hi-lo on Full Tilt when my phone rang and the four words you never want to hear from someone you love escaped Pauly's lips.

"I'm in an accident."

Thank God or whatever power may be up there that the next three were "But I'm O.K."

Seriously, I don't know what I'd do. I can't even go there right now.

Pauly was driving from Scheckytown back to the Rio along Desert Inn Road. He'd left his power cord at home when he'd left to go in to work and needed to retrieve it, thus the mid-afternoon return trip to Summerlin. At the intersection of D.I. and Ranibow, a fire truck with its sirens on ran a red light. One car stopped short. A second car stopped short behind it, and Pauly slammed into the back of that car going what sounds to me like about 25 MPH. The airbag in his shitty rental car did not deploy.

He had to deal with the police and didn't want me to come to the scene right away. I spent the next 30 minutes biting my nails and pacing around the house just hoping to Christ he was truly all right and not just being Mr. Tough Guy. I dangled my feet in the pool as the 110 degree sun baked my skin and my heart pounded in my chest with worry. He finally called back and told me where to pick him up.

About half a block away from the intersection I noticed that his car was still in the left turn lane, flanked by two police motorcycles. And then I saw the front of it, crushed like a soda can, bits of plastic littering the road, wires hanging from the space that used to house a headlight. If the car didn't end up being totaled, it was damn close.

I pulled into the parking lot of an residential building on the southwest corner of the intersection. A girl with bleached-blonde hair wearing a hoodie with rainbow stripes on it pointed me in to a parking space. With her was a guy in his early twenties wearing a black T-shirt with red writing that said "I've been a bad boy, send me to your room." The third member of their party was a dude in baggy denim shorts with a goatee and facial piercings. It was as if the green room of the Jerry Springer Show had been relocated to the parking lot of this anonymous desert condo development. Rainbow Brite totally looked like a tweaker.

Surrounded by these three, Pauly looked quite the upstanding young man. He was very professional with the cops and the tweaker kids didn't seem upset with him at all, even as I learned that a girl who was a passenger in their car had gone to the hospital for minor injuries. One turned out to be a Widespread Panic fan and they commiserated over not being able to attend Bonnaroo this weeked. Pauly had to work. Baggy shorts guy was in the middle of a "custody battle thing."

The rental car was towed away. I took Pauly back to Scheckytown where he started dealing with all the red tape that comes with an accident. After giving his statement to the insurance company and learning that pretty much everything is covered by our policy, I drove him to the Rio so he could get back to work.

I know, right? Less than four hours after totaling his car, Pauly was back in media row, feeding the hungry Tao fans WSOP updates. If that isn't a work ethic, I don't know what is. Though I warned him to call me immediately if he started feeling any pain-- the tough guy thing wasn't gonna fly and we were covered for a hospital trip if need be.

I took Desert Inn back to Scheckytown after dropping him off. While stopped at an intersection, I noticed that the police car situated directly to my left had its flashing lights on. No siren, but the lights were blazing. Had they just forgotten to turn them off or something?

The light turned green. We both went through the intersection and a few blocks later, I noticed the squad car was now behind me. The lights were still flashing. I wasn't speeding. I had zero items in the car that would get me arrested. I was sober as a nun in church. And then I remembered.

The fucking tags.

While hopping between Australia, Europe and Los Angeles this year, I hadn't noticed that my car registration had expired. One usually is reminded of such things when, I don't know, the California DMV sends you a renewal notice? That never happened. I noticed this shortly before we left for the WSOP and called them up, informing them that they (a) hadn't sent me a notice, (b) my tags were now expired and (c) was leaving the state on a long-term assignment. The minimum wage, English-as-a-second-language monkey on the phone told me essentially that it was impossible for an actual human being to send me one because it's all done by computer. Her idea of a solution was to send a check in with a copy of my old registration and somehow, magically, tags would arrive at my doorstep. I wasn't convinced.

"Oh, and by the way all your late fees have jacked up your registration renewal costs to $488.00. Thank you for calling the DMV, have a good day."

Now I was pulled over on the side of Desert Inn Road, not two blocks from where Pauly had been in his accident handing over my license, registration, and proof of insurance to some bald redneck-looking middle-aged cop. I sat there for almost half an hour while he ran everything, made a few phone calls, had three separate conversations with three separate squad cars that stopped by to say hi, oh yeah and wrote me my ticket that came with a September 19th Las Vegas court date, which just so happens to be Day 1 of the WSOP-Europe. I Googled "How much does expired tags citation ticket cost in Nevada" and the consensus seems to be around $400. Which now puts the amount of money the DMV's incompetence has fucked me up the ass for at approximately the $800 mark.

So now we both have court dates and both have a whole lot of bureaucratic red tape to untangle. I'm out a lot of money and he's out of a rental car and his good driver discount on our auto insurance policy.

But still, it's by far the luckiest day I've ever spent in Las Vegas.

One of Those Days

The minute I got to the Rio this morning, I knew it was going to be one of those days when I found that the crew from 60 Minutes had decided to use my (official reserved) spot in media row as storage for all their equipment. Yes, 60 Minutes is at the WSOP today, shooting footage for a story on all the online poker cheating scandals. Pauly even got up early to go down to the Rio to watch them interview guys like Greg Raymer and Phil Hellmuth. Only thing was, when he got there at the time he was told they were going to start, they were already wrapping up. Methinks CBS and TPTB decided to hoodwink the poker media.

Speaking of the poker media-- if you're fired from a major publication for the worst sin a writer can ever commit (and that's plagiarism in case you're wondering)-- I believe you should have your media badge permanently revoked. Yeah, I'm speaking of someone specific. Let the rampant speculation begin.

Let's talk about good writers for a second. Like my beloved. I was so happy he decided to write for himself and the Tao this year instead of being an official blogging monkey for Poker News like myself-- not only because he's in a FAR better mood/head space than he was during the last two WSOPs, but also as a longtime Tao of Poker fan. Long before I met Pauly, let alone started dating him, I was one of those people firing up the Tao every morning when I got to the office while the WSOP was running just to see who he had pissed next to or what sort of shenanigans were going down at the Hooker Bar. Pauly's writing temporarily lifted the fog of a Monday morning and made me forget just how much I hated my job and everyone I worked with, even for just a few moments a day.

Anyway, of course I'm totally biased, but I think he knocked it out of the park with this one. Check out WSOP Day 18: Never Trust a Junkie. My favorite line? "PLO destroys lives."

I'm covering the $1,500 donkament-of-the-week today. I haven't done one of these yet this year, having drawn assignments on some of the higher buy-in events like last night's $5,000 PLO with Rebuys finale that was won by Phil "OMGClayAiken" Galfond after a 3 1/2 hour heads-up match with Adam "the_houdini" Hourani. I so don't miss covering these tourist-fests that come with crowded hallways, endless lines, and idiot railbirds who come up to me and ask why their brother-in-law/sister/cousin/college roommate isn't in the chip count. I've been going with "Oh, I'm covering another event" or "No speaka thee English" in response.

I'll end this post with an open plea to Phil Hellmuth. Your shtick isn't funny anymore. You're no longer the best hold'em player in the world, I don't care how many fuckin' bracelets you've won. It's getting kind of sad, dude. I used to think there was a nice guy underneath all that hot air, but now it's impossible to separate the "personality" from the man. And all those quotes you try to directly feed to the media? We're just not that interested anymore.

Now if someone had the balls to heckle him at the tables for endorsing UltimateCheat Ultimate Bet, I'd transcribe that shit word for word.

Crankypants Change signing off...