Twelve Bars (Part I)

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
With friends surrounded
The night of wonder

- Pink Floyd

"Twelve hash bars in twelve hours. You think you're up for it?" Pauly asked as we readied ourselves to depart our room at the Victoria Hotel in Amsterdam.

"Of course I am. It wouln't be very Pot Committed of me to wuss out, now would it?"

I pulled my black corduroy trenchcoat on over four carefully chosen additional layers of clothing. I'd poked fun of "Pauly-three-shirts" all week, but my east-coast bred companion obviously knew much more about dressing for the elements than this Hollywood blonde. It was now, on Day 5 of our European getaway, that I was finally reaching an understanding of why such layers were of vital importance to remaining comfortable outdoors the whole day through.

Our morning ritual remained the same. We'd exit the hotel, the crisp breeze off the North Sea stinging my cheeks pink and opening my eyes the final 20% of the way after the previous night's bender. After a brief walk down Damrak, we'd hit our favorite French bakery and grab baguette sanwiches and chocolate croissants to eat while sitting in majestic Dam Square. Pigeons lurked at our feet, waiting for crumbs to be brushed off our laps. In an attempt to snatch away his sandwich outright, one of the saucier, more aggressive birds flew right up in Pauly's face. I'm entirely positive I let out a girly squeal as we batted him away.

From Dam Square, we walked a couple of blocks south to our first destination of the day, Abraxas. Tucked into a tiny alley off Kalverstraat, it's a warm, funky little two-story coffeeshop filled primarily at that early hour with several groups of Euro-tourists. We picked up a gram of Kushage with our coffees and carefully carried them up the steep spiral staircase to the second floor, a cozy loft space. I took a seat on the long Afghan-pattered couch at the back, while Pauly packed us our first bowl of the day. Next to us were a trio of twentysomething Scandi guys who were rolling what was perhaps the largest joint I've ever seen. We're talking Snoop Dogg size. They were so baked they could hardly move by the time we left for our next destination.

At 1 PM, we rolled into our second hash bar, the American-run Grey Area on the outskirts of the Jordaan neighborhood. About the size of my freshman year dorm room, Grey Area only had room for three tables and a tiny bar big enough for only a couple of stools. The interior was completely covered in stickers. Along with the typical pro-pot slogans and 420 references, there were stickers advertising some of my favorite bands, like Widsepread Panic, as well as stickers from Southern California institutions like Wahoo's Fish Tacos and the radio station KROQ. Every time we'd been to Grey Area, the place was packed and this time was no different. Clearly the secret is out that this tiny little coffeeshop sells some of the best weed in Amsterdam. While Pauly was up at the counter purchasing us 15 Euros of Recon, a small miracle happened and a table full of French guys got up. I snagged the table for us and we were able to relax and smoke while gazing out the window at the street scene. While the Recon gave us a powerful high, I still emerged a bigger fan of their special house strain Grey Haze. One of the best strains I've smoked in my live, that stuff got me completely lit off of one bowl. Me. Lit off ONE bowl.

We stumbled out of Grey Area around 2:30 and headed for an old favorite-- Pink Floyd. Situated on Harlemmerstratt, this three-story coffeeshop is famous for their house hash, called Umma Gumma. We couldn't get enough of it's warm, spicy taste and stopped in almost daily for refills. An eccentric Dutch man ran the weed counter and always greeted us warmly when we stopped in. Pink Floyd's was also the site for many sessions in our roving international game of Chinese Poker, and had been terrible for my luck, despite my love of their great weed and friendly atmosphere. Though we'd usually take a table in the back on the first floor, this time we decided to venture upstairs. Most staircases I'd encountered in Amsterdam wer really more like ladders and I took slow, deliberate steps upward as I gingerly balanced our hot drinks in my hands. I did not trip or injure myself this time, though there are other stories to be told of me tripping over cobblestones in some unweildly leather boots.

We played Chinese Poker again. Pauly scooped me as "High Hopes" off Pink Floyd's Division Bell album played. Sunset was already approaching at 3:15 PM and the late afternoon light poured through the window behind me. I thought my 2-7-7 top hand would at least save me one point, but it fell to Pauly's 9-9-4. In the middle hand, his A-A trounced my J-J and his 4-8 straight on the bottom crushed my 2-6 straight. I was still down 20 points or so, but that tilt was dulled by several bowls and joints of my favorite weed in Amsterdam-- soft, plump, crystal-covered buds called Buddha's Sister. Delicious beyond any medicinal stuff I've had in California, it's perhaps the best stuff I've smoked in my life.

By 4 PM it was time to start drinking as well. There are a number of hash bars in the 'Dam that serve both liquor and weed, though that heavenly juxtaposition will come to an close at years' end when a new Dutch law allowing the sale only of one or the other in any given bar will take effect. The Doors is one of those bars. Dedicated in decor to all things Lizard King, the Doors boasts a trippy low-lit interior with a full bar at the back. (They even have Southern Comfort, Al!) We took seats at the bar and each ordered a pint of the local rotgut, Heineken. Heineken flows like water in Amsterdam and more often than not costs less to order than a Diet Coke. As we sipped our beers, an episode of MTV's "Yo Momma," hosted by Wilmer "I shtupped Lindsay Lohan" Valderrama played on the TV above us with Dutch subtitles. Yo Momma jokes are surprisingly easy to follow, even in a foreign language.

From the Doors, we made our way to Pablow Picasso, another coffeeshop we'd passed umpteen times, but had never tried. We picked up a gram of their Picasso house weed and headed up to the second floor to smoke. Picasso murals covered the walls and graffiti covered the old wooden tables. We broke out the cards and continued our Chinese Poker match as a couple of German guys played chess at the table behind us. With a cozy atmosphere and a lovely view, Picasso ended up being that bar we wished we had discovered earlier in the trip. And for 7 Euros, the weed wasn't bad either.

By now, it was about 6:30 PM and with the munchies coming on, we declared "halftime" and grabbed dinner. I indulged in some schwarma while Pauly opted for a slice of pizza that had a lot of meat on it. Both of us shared a bag of frites with mayo as we dodged raindrops on the way to our sixth destination, the 420 Cafe. Our journey wasn't even halfway over.

To be continued...

Amsterdam Photo Preview

Here's a taste of Amsterdam for you:

Pink Floyd coffeeshop

Dam Square at night

Amsterdam's Rodeo Drive

Leiseplein at twilight

Grey Area door. Note the KROQ sticker.

Canal Pauly

Pot Wodka

Pot Change

The Pilgrimage

Yes, it's been a while my friends. But in the time that has passed since I scratched out a post, I've hardly stopped moving.

I survived a week at the Vegoose music festival in Las Vegas with Pauly, the Joker, and Professional Keno Player Neil Fontenot without succumbing to exhaustion, overdose, or financial ruin. After those festivities, I was home in Los Angeles for a scant 48 hours-- barely enough time to unpack, launder clothes, repack, catch up on Lost and crank out a few freelance pieces with Friday deadlines. Vegoose trip reports are imminent, but they're going to have to wait a few days, since I'm once again sitting in an airport, waiting to get the hell out of Dodge... or in this case, Newark.

I'm making a pilgrimage this week. One of the holy sort for those of us proud enough to call ourselves Pot Committed. I'll be traveling to the beautiful city of Amsterdam, along with a certain Doctor. We'll try to do our best not to pass out in public from space cakes or get rolled by hookers in the Red Light District.

Of course, no trip of mine could go off completely without a hitch. Imagine my tilt yesterday when I realized that I left my wallet in the rental car I drove home from Vegas to Los Angeles. Imagine the mind-bending panic that resulted when I called up Hertz and was told that yes, the guy who rented the car after me found the wallet and was cool enough to call Hertz and let them know that he had it, but had taken off from L.A. in the car for parts unknown. And wouldn't be back until Monday. Aiii fuckin ya. So I leave this country with only a passport and some cash. At least the absence of my credit cards will keep me on a budget.

I'll catch you on the flip side, my friends with further stories and adventures...

L.A. is Wired for ePoker

My first glimpse of an ePoker table came amidst the crazed, frenetic energy of the Gaming & Lifestyles Expo at this year’s World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. Ten guys sat hunched over a space-age poker table, its felt lined with shiny monitors instead of chips. Two dozen more railbirds and curious onlookers craned their necks to see what the fuss was about, their glances leaving the action only to catch a glimpse at the scantily-clad trade show models who cruised past, hocking their online poker wares. The table was called “Poker Pro” and it hybridized online and live poker– all of the card action proceeded on screens in front of each player much like an internet game, but players enjoyed all the benefits of a live setting, where personalities and tells can influence decisions. The action also proceeded much faster than in traditional live poker. Everyone seemed to be having a grand old time, and I learned that a dedicated ePoker Room would soon be opening at my home casino, Hollywood Park.

The gracious folks at Pokertek, the company behind the Poker Pro table, invited me down to Hollywood Park last week to attend the grand opening of the ePoker Room. And who, really am I to decline an invitation to go gamble in the middle of the afternoon? Just twist my arm, why don’t you? I got down to HPC just after one in the afternoon and the room was already packed with hungry degenerate gamblers.

The ePoker room is situated directly in front of the main casino entrance right by valet parking so you literally can’t miss it. I walked into the crowd and immediately ran into my pal Johnny, who had come in from Las Vegas for the event. “Run into” is probably a poor choice of words. More like he came at me all smiles in a lateral bear hug. We hadn’t seen each other since Legends at the Bike and we chatted excitedly about the upcoming Vegoose music festival and the Hollywood Park-meets-Star Trek poker tables we were both about to try.

“So how do we do this thing?”
“Let’s get you a card.”

Getting the card was a simple process which involved filling out a form, presenting my drivers’ license, and choosing a PIN number. The next step was to deposit money onto the card. I went over to the special ePoker window at the cage, gave the lady inside my card and $200 and I was set. Cash can stay on your card from session to session, or, you can withdraw any portion of it on the same day. I went back to Johnny and we waitlisted ourselves on the little kiosk next to the front desk. $2-4 and $5-10 limit hold’em and $1-2 and $3-5 NLHE were available as well as several sit-n-go options. $65 and $120 SNGs paid the top three spots (50/30/20 payouts just like online) and the $30 turbo variety was a winner-take-all affair (though chops are allowed, and went on). I soon found myself sitting in one of those $30 turbos, surrounded by an eclectic group of poker enthusiasts.


I was sandwiched in between two older gentlemen who had just gone heads-up in a previous SNG. One had a beard, the other wore a straw hat and had racing stubs in his front pocket. The bearded guy had won and they were looking for a rematch. I swiped my card as I said hello, the $30 immediately debiting off my balance. My name popped up on the screen underneath my starting chip count of 1,000. The interface made it look like we were playing an online SNG, just face to face. My hands fidgeted as I reflexively reached for chips to shuffle, but none were there. So, instead of getting lost in my own little iPod and chip-riffling mode as I usually do while waiting for “shuffle up and deal” I found myself checking out my opponents. The young Asian guy in the polo. The bearded guy in the hoodie that was a dead ringer for Spaceman. And the Inglewood version of Dmitri Nobles, complete with the flippped up visor and the air of invincibility. Only this guy had a five-strong posse that looked like the USC defensive line sweating him from the rail . A tiny, shrunken hands-free cellphone was hooked on to Inglewood Dmitri’s ear at all times.

The process of checking my hole cards onscreen and figuring out how to bet and raise took really only a few hands to get used to. I immediately picked up AA and doubled through courtesy of the SNG “Gigli”–Mr. Straw Hat who had hoped to do better than second this time around. Then I picked up AQ vs. Dmitri and played it a little crafty. I knew he had a decent hand, probably a big pair when he called my preflop raise so quickly and he suddenly got all serious after yucking it up with his friends. The flop came ace high. He bet a little less than the pot and I called. Turn was another ace. He checked to me and I checked it back, going for the reverse-delay “gotcha!” The river was a blank and Dmitri instantly pushed in and I instantly called. He showed QQ and his stack electronically evaporated. Ship it!

“Daaaaaammmmn. I knew you had that ace!” Dmitri exclaimed.
“If you knew she had that ace, what you doing pushing in on her, fool?” his friend replied.
“Shut the fuck up, Leon! ” Dmitri was red from tilt as he left us in seventh place.

As we continued on with our SNG, the table talk centered around how great the structures were on the Poker Pro table, but how steep the juice was in return. Compared to live single-table satellites, where dealers are shuffling after every hand, we got in maybe twice as much actual play on the ePoker table, and we were playing in a turbo structure. Several people commented how great it would be to use these tables for satellites to live events and I totally agree. Personally, I avoid the $40 crapshoot satellites to the $200 and $300 events at HPC because they’re just that. If you don’t pick up a big hand and double up in the first 10 minutes or so, you’re pretty much toast, but the PokerPro table’s ease and speed of play could really transform the live satellite experience.

The juice, however, left much to be desired. The $30 turbo SNG I played was, in reality a $20+10 affair. That’s 50% juice, and that’s absurd. The $65 SNGs were $50+15 while the $120s were a slightly more reasonable $100+20. To their credit, the Pokertek reps on hand heard everyone’s comments and criticisms, and are in the process of lowering the juice on all the SNGs. (Hollywood Park actually sets the juice, and believe it or not, these things have to be approved by the California Department of Justice.) In retrospect, $20+10 wasn’t altogether surprising at HPC, where their daily rebuy tournaments charge that same buyin and entry fee, but I’m glad to know not only that it’s being reduced, but that Pokertek listened to player feedback and took it seriously.

I finished a disappointing third in my SNG after jumping out to that early chip lead. Unfortunately a big late-stage coinflip failed me. After saying goodbye and see-you-in-Vegas to Johnny, I headed outside into the afternoon sunlight to drive home before rush hour hit. Guess who was hanging out at valet parking? Dmitri and his posse.

“Hey! Hey lady– did you win that tournament?” Dmitri asked, with hopeful eyes.
“Nah... lost a big coinflip late.”
“Daaaaaaammmmmmn!” Dmitri winced, as he turned back to his friends and peeled a bill off his roll for each one, as they razzed him. Poor Dmitri had bet on me to take it down.

I’ll definitely be back to try out the PokerPro table again, and I’m sure many of Hollywood Park’s regulars will be doing the same. I wouldn't mind tilting Dmitri again, either.

Can you spot Spaceman's doppleganger?

**Editor's Note** Pursuant to player feedback, the new SNG rake structure has just been implemented at the HPC ePoker Room. The $30 turbos are now $25+5 instead of $20+10, the $65s are now $60s with a $50+10 buyin, while the $120s are now $115s with a $100+15 buyin. MUCH better!!

The Hairdresser, The Waxer, and the Chimp Lady

Last December, only a scant few hours before I was set to meet 100 poker-blogging strangers that I had previously only communicated with via the anonymous cloak of the internet, I decided I needed the kind of confidence boost that was not found at the bottom of an an amber-tinted bottle or a sweetly scented Ziploc baggie.

I got my hair done.

The women who are reading this know what I'm talking about. Getting some snazzy layers and a professional blow-dry can lift a girl up in a way no fruity cocktail can. In the hands of a brush-and-dryer expert, my fine, board-straight blonde locks enjoy a sort of follicular CPR, emerging full of thebbounce and shine and life they'd been missing before I stepped through the salon doors. The last time I had my hair done at the Palms Las Vegas, I left feeling like the goddamned prom queen, headed straight for the $1-2 NL table and hit the high hand jackpot with quad aces.

So you could say I was looking for some version of that before meeting 100 strangers.

I had no appointment, but they were able to squeeze me in. My usual stylist wasn't there so I was turned over to a tall brunette named Krista.

"So what brings you to Vegas?"
"Well... poker really. I'm meeting up with some fellow poker degenerates for a private tournament." (I mean really, like I'm going to geek out and explain blogging and the internet to some incredibly chic, perfectly coiffed 25-year old hairdresser?)
"Poker, huh? You play?"
"Yeah."
"My ex-boyfriend plays."
"He any good?"
"Oh my God yeah. He plays like really high stakes at Bellagio."
"Did he play the World Series?"
"Only a couple of tournaments. He was back in Copenhagen for most of the summer before that."

It was then that it dawned on me.

"Who's your boyfriend?"
"Ex."
"Who's your ex?"
"His name is Gus Hansen. Have you heard of him?"

Um, yeah!

An hour later I headed over to check in to the Imperial Palace with a fabulous head of hair, courtesy of Gus Hansen's ex-girlfriend.

So yesterday, I'm in a different kind of salon. Just as hip, just as chic-yet-reasonably priced, only in this place, a different sort of thing is done to a different sort of hair.

Rrrrrrrrrrrripppp!!! (Owwwwwwwww...)

Again, my usual, uh, "stylist" wasn't there, so I got Melanie, a sparkly little pixie of a girl in faded jeans tucked into tall, cuffed brown leather boots. She talked a mile a minute in endless runon sentences punctuated with childlike giggles, all to distract me from what she was (owww!) doing.

"So tell me something interesting."
"Ummm...I play poker?"
"Really? Wow! Are you like a professional?"
"Hardly. But everyone likes to fantasize."
"How often do you play?"
"It used to be every single day, now it's maybe 5 days a week."
"I know some professional poker players, well really I know their wives! Or ex-wives! Heheheheheeee! (Rrrrrrrip!) Like, do you know Bobby Baldwin?"
"The dude who's like Master of the Universe at Bellagio? Well I know who he is."
"I do his ex-wife all the time. When they were married, it was like so cool because she'd like, send the jet for me (rrrrrrrip!) and I'd go to Burbank Airport and fly to Las Vegas just to wax her, right? And I'd get put up at Bellagio and get to go shopping and stuff."
"That's pretty sweet."
"Totally. So like, just how high stakes does Bobby play? (Rrrrriiip!) Is he really good?"
"He plays the biggest game in the world with the best players in the world. Four and eight thousand limit. You could win or lose a million dollars in that game in a night."
"Oh my God."
"Yeah."
"Like, oh. My. God. (Rrrrrriiiip!)"
"(Owwwwwwww) Yeah."
"I could never gamble that kind of money. Hehehehehe! I mean never! Would you ever gamble that big like if you had the kind of money Bobby does?"
"Never that big. I honestly can't fathom a world where I'd ever play bigger than 100-200. Even with that kind of money."
"One and two hundred what? (Rrrrrripppp!)"
"(Ohhhhhhhhhh Kelly Clarkson!) Never mind."
"OK! You're done! Wasn't so bad, right!"

I left that particular salon not feeling so much like the prom queen, but the prom queen's whorey porn star sister.

Finally, I was falling asleep on my couch last night around 1 A.M. while watching the new $10K PLO episode of the 2006 WSOP. My eyes were about to finally shut when "The Nuts" segment arrived, featuring Lee Watkinson and his creepy cage of scary monkeys. I had heard some freaky stories about Lee and the chimps back in the media room at the WSOP. While shooting this very segment, one of Lee's monkeys bit a young female ESPN producer and she ended up in the emergency room. Though the whole backyard-zoo scene was incredibly bizarre, I wasn't as fixated on the chimps as I was on Lee's freaky girlfriend, whom I instantly recognized from my first table at the Queen of Clubs event I recently cashed at the Bike. She designs these studded, graphic-printed hoodie sweatshirts that I proclaimed quelle tragique in one of my initial WSOP fashion reports for Pokerblog. She's as nutty as her designs, one of which Lee sported on the PLO final table, and spent the forty minutes she lasted in the tournament babbling through a champagne haze, as she hadn't realized that those "little glasses full of O.J." had booze in them.

I guess Lee was home with the monkeys that night.

Which Do You Wannabe?

Which Spice Girl would I want to be? I wouldn't want to be Posh Spice.

After watching her husband's adulterous affair splashed across the tabloids, Posh grew anorexically thin, and got hideous fake tits that look like cantaloupe halves stuffed beneath her chest wall. She spends an inordinate amount of time at Tom Cruise's scientology compound in Telluride and has cameras stuffed in her bony, Botoxed face as she sits front-row with cult war-bride Katie Holmes at Paris fashion shows. Then once re-ensconced back in her suite at the Ritz, Katie's Scientology "handler" chloroforms Posh and hooks her limp body up to an E-meter. Once Posh awakens with no memory of the incident, she eats half a cookie and throws it up. Who wants to be Posh? Not me.

Which Spice Girl would I want to be? I wouldn't want to be Scary Spice.

Scary does have the best Spice hair. And a tongue ring. But again, with the rock-hard, hideous cantaloupe-halves she calls breasts! Not to mention that she's engaged to Eddie Murphy. And you know that's been with tranny hookers. Next!

Which Spice Girl would I want to be? I wouldn't want to be Sporty Spice.

Though Sporty was the best singer of the five, there's the matter of that gold tooth. Gold teeth just don't belong on white girls, even athletic ones dogged by lesbian rumors. Sporty also had to deal with also being called "Mel" in the non-Spice world. Just like Scary. So there was the whole Mel B./Mel C. thing. Very confusing. I'm also not fond of active-wear as a permanent fashion statement. Unless Sporty Spice is going to suddenly turn into Cashmere Spice, the whole track suit thing is just not for me.

Which Spice Girl would I want to be? I REALLY wouldn't want to be Ginger Spice.

After abandoning her fellow Spices in the middle of their 1998 North American Tour, Ginger embarked on a disastrous solo career that spanned three albums of progessively worsening quality. She became a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador to only get TOTALLY upstaged by Angelina Jolie in the international do-gooder derby, and still couldn't sell records despite a classy makeover. Worst of all, Ginger had a child and named the poor little thing Bluebell Madonna, ensuring further generations of Spices who will need mid-life therapy.

Which Spice Girl would I want to be? I think I'd want to be Baby Spice.

Baby Spice never had to suffer a major media scandal. Unlike her four fellow Spices, Baby emerged from her fifteen-minutes-going-on-three years of global fame with nothing but a short, forgettable solo career and a whole lotta Spice cash in her bank. She's still cute, still bouncy, still blonde, engaged to some musician chap, and hopes to have all the Spices sing at her wedding. She's been nowhere near the cover of US Weekly in the last five years, has her own real breasts, and has yet to declare bankruptcy.

I'd call that a victory.

Not Such a Slow News Day

It appears that the era of the mega-WSOP is over.

Harrah's just announced that they will not be accepting third-party registrations for next year's World Series of Poker. Meaning, that only you can buy yourself in. Not an online site. Sure, sites could try and award cash instead of entries, but with $10 or $12K in your pocket in cold, hard cash instead of a direct buy-in? Come on, you're keeping the money and so am I. This decision was made as a result of the recent passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA).

Apparently, the same goes for online satellites to WSOP Circuit events as well as U.S.-based WPT events. Online satellites to events outside the U.S. are unaffected--e.g. EPT, Aussie Millions, Aruba, and the PokerStars Carribean Adventure to name a few off the top of my head.

As a result of this decision, Full Tilt sent emails to all players whom had won a WPT/WSOPC "Winner's Choice" $216 super satellite with the news, as well as other options for redeeming their prize (take it in cash, play WPT Niagra, or play their Dublin All-Stars tourney and they'll kick in some extra travel dough).

Here's the email in it's entirety, which I found over on 2+2:

Unfortunately due to the upcoming change in legislation Full Tilt Poker will no longer be able to satellite US residents into live tournaments in the US. This policy will be effective immediately. There are currently 3 options that you have with your winner's choice package.

1. We can credit your account with the $10K buy in. This money would be yours to do with what you please. We will also send you a full assortment of Full Tilt Poker gear and accessories.

2. You can choose to attend the WPT $10K tournament at the Falls View Casino in Niagra Falls, Canada. This event starts on the 24th of Oct and we would need to know by this Wendesday, the 11th if you would like to play in this tournament.

3. You can choose to attend the Dublin All-Star Tournament in Dublin, Ireland. This tournament beings on the 17th of Nov. The prize package for this event is $8K so in addition to the $2K that you have already received and the entry into the tournament, you would be credited another $6K for travel expenses and spending money.

We are extremely sorry for this inconvenience and we hope that you can understand the position that we have been pout in because of the current legal situation.

Please feel free to respond with any questions you may have along with your decision about what you want to do with your prize package.

Thank you,

Team Full Tilt

Phil Gordon and his dreamy blue eyes also addressed this policy change on this week's edition of ESPN Radio's The Poker Edge. For quotes and even more details on the whole shebang, hop over to Pokerblog.

Commence speculation on my part:

No online satellites? No more 8900 entrants in the WSOP Main Event. Maybe 2000, if that. Phil Gordon predicts 2200 on the broadcast, but I think that number is optimistic.

No online satellites? No $20M Party Poker logo on the tables. No more growth incentives that made corporate sponsorship attractive to the likes of Degree, Milwaukee's Best, and Corum Watches. Jeffrey Pollack told the media at the beginning of this year's Main Event that “We are at the very beginning of what this tournament can be from an economic standpoint.” In years to come the 2006 Main Event may be seen as not only the WSOP's peak, but the peak of the poker boom in general.

No online satellites? BIG dip in attendance at WPT events. WPT shot themselves in the foot on this one and only exacerbated it with "we-don't-care-about-the-legislation" press releases like this one. Joe Sixpack's dream of playing on a WPT televised final table has been effectively ended, and almost a dozen of poker's most high-profile pros are continuing to boycott WPT events pending the resolution of their lawsuit. Whom, exactly does the WPT expect to play in these tournaments? With the amateur "juicy" factor down, will pros be running to them in droves the way they did before now that they face significantly diminished EV? And what "young guns" will WPT have to coronate with Budweiser as their new stars when their primary route to a seat has now been completely shut down?

Of course, seeing as Harrah's was a quiet proponent of the UIGEA, there is likely some Level 17-corporate maneuvering going on behind the scenes. By geting the major online sites out of the satellite game, might Harrah's be taking the first step in clearing the path to their own online poker presence? Just imagine...

"Harrahs.com! The ONLY place you can win your seat to the WSOP!"

WSOP tourney juice + all online main event satellite juice? That's a lot of extra dough for Harrah's.

Look, I'm so far from an expert on all this stuff. Frustration and anger and disbelief and even shame chokes off the section of my brain that forms eloquent-yet-witty one-liners when I start thinking about the sinister forces at work in both corporate America and the U.S. government today. And it goes way beyond fucking internet poker. The anti-gambling legislation just parks this political ugliness in my back yard. It affects my livelihood. It affects the livelihood of many of my friends. All of us are about to become a little less free on Friday when W. signs this thing into law.

No one wins from this thing. No one benefits. Unless you count corporations and extreme right-wing politicos. There's just a whole lot more economic uncertainty and hardship on the horizon for the thousands of Americans who make a living off the online gaming boom. You can't just squash out a $12 billion industry--an industry driven by America--with a piece of paper in the middle of the night and just pretend that Americans aren't going to suffer from it. The religious right may be holding a temporary victory party for continuing to legislate their own version of morality on the population but it's not going to (a) last for long or (b) affect a damn thing at the polls. Frist looks like an idiot for jamming the legislation through the way he did. 71% of Americans believe that they should have the right to gamble online, and they're not all Democrats. It WILL come back to bite him in the ass.

Even staunch conservatives take issue with the UIGEA. I mean, when was the last time everyone on The McLaughlin Group agreed on something? Well, almost. Check out this YouTube clip that Bill Rini dug up. Everyone from the liberal dude from Time to the conservative Washington Times reporter agrees that the bill is B.S. That is, everyone except for resident nutjob Pat Buchanan. But that was predictable, right? Rini also has some awesome clips up on his blog from C-SPAN cointaining Rep. Barney Frank and Rep. Ron Paul's floor speeches opposing the UIGEA.

I may sound worked up right now, and I sort of am, but not all gaming news was bad today. According to Card Player's sources, Poker Stars is about to finally announce that they're staying in the U.S. market. Neteller appears to be all-systems-go as well. Kudos to them.

As a player, I'm largely unaffected by a lot of what is happening. I don't play satellites to $10K events. In fact, my bankroll is so freaking pathetic I'm not cashing out any of it. Two of the three sites I play on are still open for business, and I live in Los Angeles, where the world's largest poker room is only a 30-minute drive away.

But as an American, I feel all at once angry and helpless. I joined the PPA (and so should you), but until they're strong and well-orgazined enough to have a real lobbying plan, there's not a lot of concrete things I can do to fight this thing except get to the polls on November 2 where my Democratic representative and senators, all of whom supported the UIGEA, will likely be re-elected in a landslide. Heh... I don't even live in a swing state.

For tonight, I'll be playing my final games on Party Poker before cashing out that balance and bidding my super-secret, pre-blogging screen name adieu. Here's to the memories...

14-0

This is probably the only time this is ever going to happen for me, so allow me to revel in my dumb luck for just a moment. This week I had a 100% perfect sheet for the NFL games in the Pauly's Pub Pool. I arrived at these results through a complex formula of flipping coins, making less-than-educated guesses, and favoring teams that play in domes. I also went with a few blogger favorites, with Drizz's Vikings, C.J.'s Eagles, Pauly's Giants, and Donkeypuncher's Bears all pulling out victories. Look at all those beeeeauuuutiful green dots!

Guaranteed there's no way I'll do this well again, but for now? 14-0, baby! Ship it!

Pigs on the Wing

"Goddammit. We SO should have taken that spot back by Ivan the Russian drug dealer's building" sighed Showcase, as we sat in gridlock on Franklin Avenue on our way to the Hollywood Bowl.

We had noticed only moments ago that this particular slice of the road was home to no less than half a dozen out of work actors and narcotics salespeople that we'd befriended over the years since Showcase migrated west from New York City. There was Ivan, of course, and sketchy Mario, Elisha, the girl from our college theatre program who took her top off for art in a little-seen indie film and Zack, who got dropped by his acting agent and started writing scripts for the Russian version of The Nanny. All on one block.

This very scene-- the two of us stoned out of our minds while sitting in pre-concert traffic for a Roger Waters show-- had played out nearly six years ago, shortly after Showcase made his home in Los Angeles. Only that time, the scene of the crime was the far-right lane of the 405 freeway in Irvine, where a mile-long line of hippies, ravers, and other assorted drug-friendly folk, pulled out their pipes while sitting in gridlock and flashed each other the thumbs-up as they snuck a few tokes during the wait at the exit for the Verizon Wireless Ampitheatre. Which, back then before corporate buyouts and Degree all-in moments was better known as Irvine Meadows.

"Dude, it is still WAY too far to walk and with our luck we'll get a parking ticket. Just keep going to Hollywood & Highland" I said, as I bent down to pull a hit of Super Silver Haze. "At least this time you don't have to pee and require a Chinese fire-drill in the middle of the freeway so I can drive while you urinate in the bushes."

It took us 30 minutes to inch the last mile or so and we parked in the structure at the Hollywood and Highland shopping mall. After grabbing takeout from CPK, it was another 20 minute walk up the canyon to the concert past a legion of ticket scalpers and T-shirt salesmen.

I have a special affinity for the Hollywood Bowl. It was the site of my first summer job over 12 years ago. Ushering wealthy season ticket holders to their boxes for minimum wage and enojying a full menu of free concerts six nights a week was (and still is) the best gig a 16-year old performing arts junkie could ask for. I saw everyone from Bernadette Peters to The Who in those mid-nineties summers, and all from the prime perch of the first level of seats. Most of the money I earned was promptly dumped off in the used CD section of the late, great Aron's Records on Highland Ave.

Showcase had never been to the Bowl and was instantly impressed. The place is huge-- an 18,000 seat ampitheatre sunk into Cahuenga Pass in the Hollywood Hills. The two lowest sections are made up of four-person boxes where can yuppies enjoy gourmet picnics before showtime. At a show like this, however, wine and cheese are scarce and the boxes are primarily home to celebrities whose agents got them good seats. Like Lisa Loeb, whom I saw waving for a friend just before the lights went down. Our seats were pretty good for commoners-- in the first section of benches above the boxes toward the stage right side.

Roger Waters, Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles CA. 10/5/06

I) In the Flesh, Mother, Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, Shine on You Crazy Diamond > Have a Cigar, Wish You Were Here, Southampton Dock, The Fletcher Memorial Home> Perfect Sense (Parts I and II), Leaving Beirut, Sheep

II) Dark Side of the Moon: Speak to Me > Breathe > On the Run > Time > The Great Gig in the Sky > Money > Us and Them > Any Colour You Like > Brain Damage > Eclipse

E) The Happiest Days of Our Lives > Another Brick in the Wall (Part II), Vera > Bring the Boys Back Home > Comfortably Numb

Roger Waters draws an eclectic crowd-- hippie kids, indie rock kids, forty and fiftysomething parents with their teenage sons, entertainment industry douchebags, L.A. Weekly-reading NPR-listening Silverlakers that valet-parked their Priuses and strung out, glassy-eyed wookies who looked as if they'd crawled out of the hills themselves. At this point, Pink Floyd songs, especially those of their magnum opus Dark Side of the Moon, are, in a way great muscial equalizers. Whether it was in your parents' basement with an apple bong, at a light show in Griffith Park or synched with The Wizard of Oz in the dorm lounge, everyone has their story about the first time they listened to Dark Side. It transcends genres and generations. My 59- year old father loves it, I love it, and if I'm ever sober long enough to bring a child into this cruel world, I'll make sure it loves it too. Even Showcase, who infamously thought that Trey Anastasio was a member of the Beastie Boys pretty much knows all the words.

Waters doesn't vary his setlists too much, opening as usual with a hard-charging "In the Flesh" that got the crowd fired up. We sparked our first joint during the sweet acoustic opening of "Mother" and the long haired high school kid in front of us begged for a toke. I passed to him and made his day as Showcase cringed.

"I want a new joint. God knows what diseases he has."

"Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun", while not one of my favorite tunes, was a dark, trippy excursion into the early Floyd catalog, while "Shine on You Crazy Diamond", "Have a Cigar", and "Wish You Were Here" satisfied the crowd's appetite for the classics. About halfway through the first set, the dippy blonde girl in the tight pink sweater sitting two seats away from me experienced a personality transplant as her roll kicked in. She started spastically dancing at completely random intervals, occasionally, during the spaciest musical passages that are usually more, well... swayable than danceable. She was in her seat... she was out of her seat. Oh wait, she's standing on top of the bench... oh now she's down. Her enormous breasts bounced freely inside the sweater's clingy rib knit as a lascivious man with a goatee stared slack-jawed at her from the row behind us. Showcase and I started prop betting the over/under on how many seconds she would remain seated before experiencing another urge to dance.

A definite anti-war sentiment ran through the show, beginning with "Southampton Dock" and continuing with the new Waters song, "Leaving Beirut." He wrote it about a day he spent in Lebanon as a 17-year old when his car broke down and an Arab family took him in for the night. It was also one of the more unabashedly anti-Bush rock songs I've ever heard, with lyrics such as "Oh George! Oh George!/ That Texas education must have fucked you up when you were very small" and "Don't let the might, the Christan right/ fuck it all up for you and the rest of the world." Naturally, the California hippie blue state crowd (including myself) ate that shit right up.

The first set ended in stunning fashion as Waters broke out into "Sheep" off the Animals disc. During the song, a giant inflatable pig flew across the audience, the phrases "Impeach Bush," "Kafka Rules OK" and "Vote Democratic Nov. 2" graffitied in black on its sides. Thousands of cell phone cameras flew open as the pig traveled around the ampitheatre, and was finally released into the night sky during the song's killer coda.

After a quick setbreak, Waters and his band lit into Dark Side. And while hearing it live is always thrilling, there was something too clean about their rendition. David Kilminister, tackling David Gilmour's guitar solos, had every note down perfectly, but was missing the spontenaity and soul that could have taken those elegant riffs to a whole other level. Carole Kenyon, however, ripped the shit out of the vocal solo on "The Great Gig in the Sky." Girl can belt a perfect high F like it's nothing. During the finale of Brain Damage > Eclipse, a black pyramid rose out of the top of the stage and a neon rainbow of light burst from its right side, mirroring the album's famous cover.

The encores all came from The Wall, beginning with a smoking rendition of "Another Brick in the Wall." More anti-war sentiment was abound during "Bring the Boys Back Home" as images of Iraq flew by on the video screen behind the band. Comfortably Numb closed the show in a thrilling fashion as fireworks shot into the sky from behind the stage shell.

As Showcase and I maneuvered through the buzzing crowd back down the hill toward Highland Avenue, I wondered aloud if the old black man with the dog puppet was still around, singing improvised gospel songs to the departing concert-goers. Not a night had gone by back in the summers of 1994 and 1995 where I wouldn't walk out of the theatre, bound for the bus to the employee shuttle lot and see this guy belting his heart out, a tattered gray dog puppet, mouthing the words along with him, an open suitcase on his lap for donations. Sure enough, he was there. He looked almost exactly the same. The puppet, however was rather worse for wear. I tossed a dollar into his case as we passed by.

As we headed back in to Hollywood, we trudged along with the rest of the audience, all in various states of intoxication. Approaching Franklin Ave., Showcase suddenly seized my arm and pulled me around to walk on his other side.

"What the fuck?"
"See that guy up there? "
"Yeah."
"He has grabby hands."
"Grabby hands?"
"Yes. Grabby hands. Look at him. He is fighting one hell of an urge to grab that woman's ass."

Showcase was totally right. This dude looked like a total child molester and walked with both hands cupped out in front of him, as if he were about to do the deed. Buzzing from the joints we'd enjoyed inside, we got a serious case of the giggles and Grabby Hands must have heard us, because he shoved his hands in his pockets and took off running down a side street.

Just as we turned to look at each other in surprise, a six-foot tall platinum blonde feat of plastic surgery with glossy fish lips so collagened they were about to burst squeezed right between us in the crowd, heading "upstream."

Only in Hollyweird. We laughed so hard it hurt.

Score

If the curtain's coming down on internet poker, this was a pretty nice swan song.

The Sky is Falling

We interrupt this poker sitcom to bring you a special report... because how I did in a tournament last night is so getting bumped off the front page and into the "Lifestyles" section.

I didn't sleep much last night. I'm sure the same goes for a lot of you.

This actually isn't the first time I've worked for a corporation that has seen its stock lose over 50% of its value. A long time ago, back in the late 20th century, I was a tiny cog in the wheel of a giant media conglomerate that did just that. I saw young executives who had finally graduated to that company stock portfolio lose thousands overnight and Senior VPs and Division Presidents put their houses on the market. Directors and VPs burned up the phone lines to rival studios, reaching out for whatever potential employment scraps were available. It wasn't mass hysteria, but it was close.

The stock never reached its high again, but it did rebound. A lot of people lost their jobs, but the vast majority were unaffected. Mostly, everyone just freaked out until the dust settled and we got a clearer picture of the future.

I don't have a lot of faith in my government anymore. We go to war with a country that never attacked us while 9/11's mastermind still drinks tea and eats llama with his cronies in a cave somewhere. 50 million Americans don't have health insurance. 37 million live below the poverty line. There is a hole in the sky that is slowly giving us all cancer and Republicans with their hands in the oil industry's deep pockets are still telling us that global warming doesn't exist. People can still get weapons and explosives on airplanes. A bodybuilder-turned-action star governs the state I live in. And our elected representatives are jerking off to IM conversations with 13-year old boys.

Still, with all those problems, our Congressional leadership finds it more important to sneak online gaming legislation through the back door of the Capitol like a $200 hooker. Just so Bill Frist can curry favor with Iowa politicians right before he prepares to barnstorm that state for the 2008 Republican primary. Personally, I hope he runs. Democrats couldn't ask for a better opponent.

Ladies and gentelmen, we are IN the Twilight Zone.

As I watched the London markets open and the initial reports roll in on CNN in the middle of the night, even the broadcasters themselves were completely taken aback by the news. Online gaming is a $12 billion industry, and Bill Frist just hacked it to pieces overnight.

I'll admit, I'm scared. After all, I currently make a living in the poker industry. But I'm not going to panic. I'm not going to cash out my accounts yet. Here's why.

While Party and Stars feel like they have to legally cover their asses at this point in time in terms of suspending U.S. accounts, I can't believe for one minute that they will walk away from this fight, leaving literally billions of dollars on the table. American poker players are these companies' life blood. They love us the way Chevron loves SUVs. If SUVs were sneakily banned overnight, do you think Chevron would just say "oh well" and move on? Despite their falling stock prices, the gaming giants have a lot of money. If I were one of their execs, I'd be finding ways to stuff that money into the pockets of whatever politicos in Washington I needed to in order to get a poker exemption or work-around put in place.

There are ways to get around stupid laws. I'm smoking this joint right now, aren't I?

Let's all take a deep breath and ask what we can do. There has never been a better time for activism. And I'm not just talking about poker.

Same Story... New Ending (Part I)

FADE IN:

INT. CHANGE100's CAR, 10 FREEWAY- DAY
Our blonde heroine sits in freeway traffic, a pot pipe on her lap, driving the familiar route to the Bicycle Casino. Introspective music swirls out of the speakers.

CHANGE (V.O.)
Another ladies event. Why do I do this to
myself? I might as well take that hundred
in my wallet and run it through a shredder.
Or use it to feed the homeless. Or buy pot.
Anything but donk it off to some bulldyke
when I overplay A-Q in the first ante level.

BETTER SELF
Well that's no way to go into a tournament.
If you're going to be like that, why not just
turn the car around?

Change SCREAMS and slams on the brakes. Suddenly, there's another blonde riding shotgun. She could be Change's better-rested, more glamorous twin. In fact, she is.

CHANGE
Who the fuck are you?

BETTER SELF
I'm your better self.

CHANGE
Holy shit. I've finally lost it. I'm
hallucinating in narrative decives.

BETTER SELF
It's hardly that dramatic. That dank
Showcase bought you last night is just
a pretty wicked high.

CHANGE
So why are you here?

BETTER SELF
I'm your hallucination. You tell me.

CHANGE
Why am I playing this event? I
should just go down there, get a
story to write about and go home
and watch The Amazing Race.

BETTER SELF
Because you know you're capable of
winning.

CHANGE
But all that ever happens after one of
these things is that I end up sad or on
tilt.

BETTER SELF
Because a good result in one of these
things is important to you. If winning
wasn't so important, then losing would
never hurt.

CHANGE
Well duh, I know that.

BETTER SELF
Of course you do. How else would I
have said it?

CHANGE
Good point.

BETTER SELF
You are so your own worst enemy.
Give yourself a little credit. You
know how to play this game.
And you know you're capable of
outplaying a lot of this field.

CHANGE
Yeah, you're right, you're right I
know you're right.

BETTER SELF
So suck it up and shut off this
whiny fuckin' indie rock and get
yourself ready for this thing.

CHANGE
You don't have to get snippy.
I secretly sort of like Death Cab
for Cutie, which means you do too.

Change pulls into a parking space near the far end of the lot and takes one last toke.

BETTER SELF
Wanna know something?

CHANGE
Sure.

BETTER SELF
I have a feeling you're going to get
back into this car with more dough
than you got out of it with.

CHANGE
Really?

BETTER SELF
Really. Try not to fuck it up, OK?

Better Self disappears in a puff of smoke. Change shakes off the hallucination, and gets out of her car. Ten yards in front of her, a MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN with a bad red dye job waddles toward the casino entrance. A smile spreads across Change's face.

CHANGE
You're mine.

To be continued...

The Shit Envelope

To begin, today, I would like to thank my #1 referral this week, the Google search for "Jamie Gold Sued." The Tao of Poker was a distant second.

Showcase always thinks he's dying. He's a borderline hypochondriac. And he's Jewish. A couple of months ago, he found this tiny lump on his back, below his shoulder and demanded, nearly every day that I feel it for him.

"It's bigger today, isn't it?"
"Yeah. It's swollen because you keep poking at it. Chill the fuck out."

Showcase wouldn't stop touching it and became convinced he had back cancer. He even went and saw a doctor about it, who told him that it was absolutely nothing. I had a great "I told you so" moment when he walked in the door that particular afternoon.

Over the last few days, Showcase had been complaining of stomach problems. I told him it was probably indigestion from the Jack in the Box "Outlaw Burger" he'd eaten for lunch that day. But it hurt again the next day. And the next.

By Saturday, Showcase was convinced he had stomach cancer and, over Rosh Hashanah dinner, obtained the phone number of a Beverly Hills specialist from his equally Jewish hypochondriac friend Marissa. He got himself an appointment for Tuesday.

Well, Showcase saw that doctor yesterday. He came home with a smirk and a bottle of Nexium.

"So, what's the verdict? Acid reflux? You have Ashlee Simpson disease?"
"Probably. But they have to do some tests to rule out other things."
"What sort of test?"

That is a question I never should have asked.

For three days, Showcase has to take his own stool sample, and mail it back to the doctor in an envelope. An envelope. He has to take a shit, then take this white plastic thing and stick it in the shit to get a sample. Then he takes the shit stick and puts it into a compartment of this envelope. After three days, he sticks a stamp on the thing and goes to the post office.

How is this sanitary? And who opens those envelopes?

I have $10 on an ulcer. And can no longer walk into my bathroom without thinking of the shit envelope in the left-side drawer.

Finding the Swing

I really wanted to like the pilot of NBC's Studio 60 . After all, Aaron Sorkin is pretty much my favorite living screenwriter. I was just nuts about The West Wing and he was always a guy whose career I followed back when I was a suit on Wilshire Boulevard. In my freshman year in the business I worked on the Warner lot as The West Wing shot its first season. Guys in blue suits with Secret Service earpieces joined the army of ER extras in bloody scrubs along with the assorted assistants I'd stand in line with at the studio commissary every day at lunch. The show shot in a building right next to the commissary and the enormous brown barn-like doors to the stage always seemed to be open. No one was famous yet, no one had won any Emmys, and I had a friend who was an assistant at John Wells Productions so I got to come on set a few times. Watching even a tiny piece of that show get made was such a thrilling thing to experience as an utterly green 22-year old.

When Sorkin famously left that series four seasons in, every development executive in town including myself salivated at the thought of him being back on the writing market (though he certainly worked his way through the singles scene at Hollywood's upper eschelons as well). I read most of what he put out in those post West Wing years, including his terrific draft of Charlie Wilson's War and an overlong, disappointingly dry spec screenplay called The Farnsworth Invention, which he later rewrote as a play after it was bought and then thrown in turnaround by New Line if my memory serves me correctly. And one Hollywood mogul's wife based a character in her best-selling dishy chick-lit novel on Sorkin. It's about a Hollywood wife whose producer husband leaves her for a younger woman. Then there's the number of other P.R. black eyes that have haunted Sorkin through the years. Public drug habit. Divorce. Getting pinched by the cops for 'shrooms on his way to Vegas.

Whatever. I say to hell with publicists, to hell with the blow and the pot and the airport drug arrests. I can certainly live with that kind of stuff and I frequently thank my higher power that I haven't been "Sorkined" at airport security at some point in my short life. Aaron Sorkin is a fantastic writer. And as a fan of fantastic writing, I really wanted to like his pilot.

But I didn't like the pilot.

Something about it was off. Pace? Tone? I couldn't feel the characters in that deep, instantaneous way that I always want to whenever I watch TV or a film. It tried too hard. Showcase thought the cinematography and design aesthetic was too "noir" for a TV comedy about a TV comedy and I tended to agree. (Though I secretly think Showcase was just bitter about not getting called back for the part in the Studio 60 that went to Stephen Corddry. I can't tell you how many times I had to rehearse that 'Bernadette from the Bernadette blog' scene with him.)

But something happened when I watched the second episode. I fell a little bit in love with the show.

Not quite the love at first sight I felt for the first season of West Wing, but a different kind of love. Slower. Below the surface at first. Then surprising as each layer is pulled off. Amanda Peet and Sarah Paulson still suck and are totally miscast, but this week's installment got me totally more invested in the characters and the world. The real story kicked into motion. It's great to see Matthew Perry actually acting. And the noir thing bothered me less. But most of all, that lilting, stacatto dialogue of Sorkin's that I so love is back en force. It's clear that the backstage-at-a-TV-show material is personal to him. And he found his swing this week.

Thank God. I was just about to be totally disappointed.

* * * * *

I'm finding my own swing right now, as I continue to craft my feature script. Working more intensely and every single day will do that. When I was writing it more sporadically back in the spring, it was so difficult for me to jump back into my characters' voices after putting the piece down for a few days here, a week there. But committing to be here, at my desk, in the early mornings and the late nights just willing myself to get these pages out has made all the difference. I know these characters so well now I can think with their brains. I know what music I have to listen to while writing their dialogue. And the details just come naturally. That's when I'm writing my best.

Preparing for my own process has also made all the difference. You have no idea how much aggregate time I save each week just by having a steady supply of coffee, Diet Coke, Honey Nut Cheerios and marijuana in my apartment.

I used to always think I had to "feel it" to be able to write well. My best stuff is still the stuff I write the quickest and the most effortlessly. But there's a lot to be said for just showing up to batting practice every day. If I whiff a few, it's not the end of the world. Just stay in the box. Keep swinging. Another ball will come off the mound. Maybe a better one. In writing my stare is too often a thousand yards out, worrying about the end result. If I'll live up to all the expectations. Most of all, my own-- for those expectations are far more punishing than anyone else's. Parents, friends, Showcase, Charlie, Hollywood, whatever. I think in the last couple of weeks, I've been able to cast aside those expectations better than I ever have before.

The resulting bi-product? A lot of pages that I like a lot. A lot a lot.

But I still have quite a way to go...

How I Played Like Shit for a Cruise

I just made a pathetic showing in the Pokerblog.com WSOP Invitational. 13 of us who contributed to the site during the WSOP were invited to slug it out on the Party Poker felt for a freeroll. The seriously awesome prize? A luxury cruise for two. Seeing as those are probably the best odds I will ever see when it comes to winning a trip for myself by playing poker, I was totally psyched... that is until I lasted less than 30 minutes into the tournament.

I picked up A-A early and won a small pot on the K-7-Q flop against Michalski. I picked up one set of blinds with K-Q. Then I found 9-9 in EP and raised to 175 with 30-60 blinds. The SB and BB both called. Flop was J-3-2 with two diamonds. I have no diamond. The SB checks and the BB min-bets 60 into the 425 chip pot. I raise to 300, the SB folds and the BB calls. I put the BB on a diamond draw. Turn is the 3h. I fire 750 and the BB calls again. Now I'm worried about a jack. The river is perhaps the worst card in the deck for me... the Ace of diamonds. Thankfully, the BB just decides to min-bet another 60 and I call it off. BB had K8 of diamonds and my stack is already sliced in half thanks to some unfortunate luck.

I made two pair against Michalski and got back up to 2400 of my 3000 starting chips, but I wouldn't hang on to them for long.

J-J in EP, I raise to 300. Michalski calls on the button and the BB calls. Flop is 7-7-3, no suits. I like this flop for my jacks. The only thing I'm really worried about is a 7, because a bigger pair would have likely re-raised. The BB leads with a min-bet of 100. BB has something (medium pair? Draw?) , but I have to see where I stand. I raise to 425. Michalski folds and the BB re-pops it to 650. That sends alarm bells off in my head. What hands containing a 7 would call from the BB. Really just A-7. Mayyyybe 7-8 suited. I have to call 325 more into the pot which now stands at 2125. So I do. Turn is a 10. The BB min-bets 100 again. I cannot fold for 100 so I call. The river is a 3. The BB min-bets 100 one more time. And one more time I cannot fold for 100 so I call. BB had 7-8. More stack goes poof for me. (Is it insane to just fold there on the flop when I've put him on a 7?)

With something like 700 left and 100-200 blinds, I moved all-in three or four hands later with Qc-Qs. When April called on the button I knew I was dead, and her K-Q flopped a K to take me out in 11th place of 13.

Thankfully, my completely shitty play and worse luck will prevent the fist-fight that would have inevitably ensued between Showcase and Pauly over who I'd take along on the trip. Ah, the YouTube video that will never be...

Congrats to Tim "Poker Shrink" Lavalli who took it all down! If you haven't checked out his articles on Harrah's $2 million mistake at the WSOP Main Event, then get thee to Poker News.

A Birthday, A Homeless Man, and a Trail of Bread Crumbs

Today, please join me sparking a freshie in honor of one of New York City and the blogosphere's finest writers. I think I can safely speak for all of your friends when I say that we're better for knowing you (even though you are one of the worst proposition bettors in the western world) and that your words touch us and make us laugh every day. Happy 34th, Dr. Pauly. I hope it's a good one!

Otis left this weirdo comment yesterday and for hours I went around just thinking that he had seriously lost his mind after watching something like 467 hours of WCOOP tournaments this week for the Pokerstars blog. That is, until I read through my own Bloglines folder and noticed his post on Up for Poker about his budding poker novel (awesome?). He left pieces of the intro, trail-of-breadcrumbs style in various bloggers' comments. Pretty clever for a redneck, that Otis. Anyway, the story kicks ass and I suggest you go follow the yellow brick road and read it for yourself. It begins here.

So I'm pulling out of a driveway on Fairfax today, trying to make a right turn without getting killed by the steady stream of oncoming traffic. Between the parked cars, the left-lane gridlock, the assholes trying to zip around the gridlock, and the big-ass Metro Bus stopped on the corner, I couldn't see shit. So I was waiting it out until the light changed. That is, until the face of a deranged homeless man appeared TWO INCHES FROM MY CAR WINDOW, which was rolled down.

"Why don't you just drive, bitch? Huh! Just go! Huh!" screamed the homeless man. He was literally about to come through my window. Here, in the middle of Fairfax Avenue, in rush hour traffic.

"THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU CRAZY MAN, BACK THE FUCK OFF!" I barked in reply. My icy blue eyes bore into his and my hand reflexively locked the door. The driver's side window was notoriously sticky and getting that up would require two hands and a lot more time than I had to get this freak away from me. Yes, everything is broken in my car. Even the things that crank up the windows and the right-side speakers.

Thankfully the light changed and I was able to pull away unscathed. The homeless man quickly lost interest in me as I sat in traffic a quarter-block away and he decided instead to harass some people at the Metro Bus stop.

Lunatics are just drawn to me, I suppose.

Cocaine in a Can, Baby!

It doesn't contain real cocaine (damn).

But it is a drink. And it is in a can.

And it is called Cocaine.

It is...Cocaine in a Can, baby!!!!

Grinding it Out

With a somewhat rehabilitated bankroll thanks to $22 SNGs on Full Tilt, I played a few tournaments this weekend, including the latest WPBT Circuit Event where I finished 5th of 19, just missing the money. Congrats to Bad Blood for taking it all down. I cashed two other tournaments on Full Tilt (but no final tables) and just missed the money in one of the huge-field Stars Crazy Re-buys. I also bubbled not one, but two $8.80 turbo super satellites to the WCOOP Razz event because that's what I do when I'm high and playing poker in the middle of the night.

I also re-deposited on Poker Stars to get in on the reload bonus going on now (20% up to $120). I like the Stars bonuses because they're fairly easy to clear even at low limits and you get a nice chunk of time to do it. By hitting and running at $2-4 LHE all weekend, I'm up over $400 and I'm 2/3 through the bonus.

For the first time ever, I'm participating in a football pool, the Doctor's annual"Pauly's Pub" extravaganza. It's fun, a bunch of bloggers are participating, and just like bloggers, we all made up incredibly clever names for our teams like the "Reno Keno Crayon-Eaters" and "I Don't Roll on Shabbas."

Though I love watching college foolball, this blonde don't know jack shit about the NFL. I mean, we're so self-absorbed here in L.A. that we don't even have a team anymore. Though I've been told that things like recruiting and injuries and player stats all go into making successful picks, I just don't have the time or patience for all that that some of my degenerate friends do. So I have devised a secret and incredibly scientific system for picking my teams. It uses a complex formula incorporating (1) how fierce the team's uniforms look, (2) the position on the food chain of the animal representing the team and (3) whether or not I've actually heard of any of the players on the team. While my first week was a little rocky, I hit my groove on Sunday, picking 11 of 15 winners.

Of course I won't let you in on my secrets.

At Wil's request, I'm posting a picture of Heidi, but unfortunately, not one of her ass. She can also be found on page 6 of this week's issue of Us Weekly, in which 66% of the magazine's readership believed she wore this green and white Ya-Ya dress better than Ashlee Simpson did.

I have another week of grinding out (hopefully) another 20 pages of my screenplay. A couple hundred more on Stars would be nice too. I'm also posting every day on Pokerblog along with our all-star team of Dan Michalski, Tim "Poker Shrink" Lavalli, Amy Calistri, April Kyle, Jen Browning, Tuscaloosa Johnny, and our latest addition, Gonz, who is writing some great coverage from the WPT Borgata. Check it out.

Heidi's Ass

While waiting for my Tuscan Chicken sandwich at Subway this afternoon I stood in line behind one of those tall, blonde L.A. princesses. She had a $300 haircut and wore a ribbed cotton henley that probably ran her $125 on Robertson Blvd. She was constantly moving, shifting her weight from one impossibly long leg to the other as she gabbed to her less fashionable, less attractive friend. Every guy in the place had both eyes firmly fixed on her ass. Even I was a little bit mesmerized by it's Hollywood perfection. As I listened to her verbally vomit bimbo drivel all over the just-washed floors of the restaurant, it occured to me that her grating voice was a little too familiar. I watched the Mexican guys behind the counter assemble two six-inch subs and one footlong before realizing who she was.

Ever watch that MTV reality show "The Hills?" Well it was the girl from that show. Not the main girl with the internship at Teen Vogue, but her vapid blonde friend who quit school and got a job as an assistant to a club promoter but totally wanted to quit because she thought she would just be going to cool parties and stuff, but was shocked to find out she'd have to like, xerox shit and file. Mainly she just lay around the pool in front of the cameras at their apartment complex and went to clubs at night. I think her name is Heidi.

From the way they were speaking, I deduced that the less attractive friend was actually Heidi's less attractive roommate.

Heidi: We're not gonna eat these here, right?
Friend: I don't know.
Heidi: No, we'll take them back to the house. Then we can watch Sex and the City, right?
Friend: Sounds good.
Heidi: So I got invited to Fergie's record release party. It's tonight. But I'm really just like, not in the mood to get all cute and stuff, you know?
Friend: Totally.
Heidi: I dunno. Maybe I'll get a pedicure later and see how I feel.

What a life.

Good Cards Spell Doom

Don't you hate when your overpair hits a set on the river only to make your fish opponent's gusthot straight that he was inexplicably calling pot sized bets with and you go broke after playing perfect poker for over four fucking hours in a Stars Deep Stack Tournament, the agonizing structure of which is supposed to you know, alleviate some of that luck factor and then you find yourself yelling WHEN THE FUCK IS A GOOD CARD NOT GOING TO SPELL MY FUCKING DOOM! while your landlord chooses that moment in time to walk around the back of the building right next to your bedroom window to see if you're home so he can snake the clogged sink that he's been promising to fix for over a week now?

I wouldn't know anything about it.

Transsexuals, Two Million Extra Chips, and a 180

I just stood in line behind a preoperative transsexual at Old Navy. He was very tall and built and wore gym shorts and muscle T but had your 55-year old aunt's frizzy auburn ponytail and wore fuschia lipstick. Thick gold hoop earrings finished off the look. He/she purchased a curious combination of scoop-neck henleys and boxer shorts and paid cash. Only in L.A.

As I turned out of the parking lot and prepared to make a left on La Cienega, I noticed a huge banner dangling off the Beverly Center mall. "H&M. Beverly Center. Fall 2006." I almost read-ended the SUV in front of me as I squealed in delight and speed-dialed Showcase.

Fashion-conscious east coasters know what I'm talking about. H&M has some fabulous stuff at insanely low prices. Whenever I go to New York, I'm guaranteed to bring back at least two full bags of stuff back on the plane with me, and I'll have spent like $200. It's about fuckin' time they set up shop out here.

* * * * *
I urge all of you to check out Amy Calistri and Tim Lavalli's stellar three-part article "Two Million Questions: Will Poker Answer?" over on Poker News. These two just spent the last three weeks intensely investigating how two million extra chips were added to the final chip count in this year's WSOP Main Event and they come to a very compelling, specific conclusion. Tournament poker's security and quality-control procedures have grown obsolete in the face of super-sized fields and Tim and Amy have shown a lot of guts in explaining why.

Two Million Questions: Will Poker Answer? (Part I)
Two Million Questions: Will Poker Answer? (Part II)
Two Million Questions: Will Poker Answer? (Part III)

* * * * *

I'm off the poker schneid thanks to one of those Stars 180-player SNGs. I managed to make the final table in one last night, though I exited in a disappointing sixth when A8 flopped an 8 against my AK after getting the money in pre-flop. The $180.00 was nice, as was the knowledge that the players in these are still frighteningly bad.

Might try another tonight.

Back to School

Sorry about that little hiatus, friends.

Well it's been 2 weeks. Where the fuck have I been? I only have about 20 minutes to tell you.

I covered the WPT Legends of Poker and Ladies Night IV at the Bicycle Casino last week for my new gig at Pokerblog. All of my articles can be found here. My favorites of the pieces I did that week are my WPT Ladies Night IV Preview and the one I wrote about witnessing a High-Stakes Chinese Poker side game with Layne Flack, Phil Hellmuth, and Gavin Smith. Special thanks to Wil for linking up my coverage on Card Squad.

Spaceman came to town to cover Legends for Bluff, and Pauly jetted to L.A. for a vacation after his long weekend in Colorado seeing Galactic with the Joker and Professional Keno Player Neil Fontenot. We spent a lot of the week relaxing up at Zuma Beach in Malibu. Showcase, meanwhile, met a new woman and I'm thrilled to report that she's absolutely lovely. Instead of picking her up drunk off her ass in a sushi restaurant, this time he met his girl at an obnoxious bar on Sunset Blvd. that he'd have never gone to had he not been hanging out with a new friend with great drugs. She was there entertaining an out of town friend and the rest is history. Only drawback? She lives in the valley.

The universe continues to send me signs that I should not play poker. They come in the form of having me lose set over set on the VERY FIRST HAND of a Full Tilt tournament (that was today) and bubble untold numbers of SNGs with dominating hands (that was last week). Not dominat-ED. Dominat-ING. It's like being a little kid who reaches up to the countertop to take a cookie off a plate only to have her hand slapped away. It stings and I'm hungry.

Last night I watched a lot of the WSOP coverage and spotted a lot of friends lurking in the background including Pauly, Tuscaloosa Johnny, Jen Browning, Dan Michalski (I think it was your pink shirt), Mad Harper, and Spaceman. The real stars of the show, however were Ryan and C.J. Ryan busted a world champion in Chris Ferguson and looked totally classy and sportsmanlike in the process, while C.J. got more airtime than world champion Tom McEvoy as he sweated day 2 chipleader Dimitri Nobles. My heart jumped as I heard Nobles call "C.J.!" and give him a totally manly bump-hug alongside the T.V. featured table after his A-8 brutally sucked out his opponent's K-K. One great luckbox deserves another.

The next six weeks will be full of intense writing for me. In addition to Pokerblog, I have a few pieces due for freelance clients, but more importantly, I've carved this six weeks into my schedule in between trips and big poker events to get as much work done on my screenplay as humanly possible. Perhaps even finish the first draft. It's what I'm trying for. So it's probably not a bad idea to play less poker. I have the next two days to sort of re-organize my life and my apartment and watch a few movies I need to watch to get myself re-absorbed in the tone of the piece. It's almost like getting ready to go back to school.

On the same note, I sent a "hey what's up" email to Charlie yesterday with that same subject line and his reply this morning started with the line "DEAR LORD! I thought you were going back to school!!!"

So maybe it's a lousy metaphor. But my 20 minutes are up.

Treading Water in a Leaking Pool

I was looking back over my posts from the past couple of months and realized that I'd only written twice about my own play all summer. It doesn't mean I haven't been playing (though I did have a month in there at the WSOP when I didn't have the time to play online). I've played plenty of poker this summer. In fact, I played more live poker in July and August than I've probably played all year.

There just wasn't a ton I wanted to write about. Because I'm sick of writing about losing. I'm as sick of writing about losing as I am of reading about losing. But if anyone was curious about how I'm playing lately, that's what's been happening.

Here's what usually happens. I make a big cash in a tournament, repairing whatever bankroll losses I was suffering from at the time. I play more tournaments (since it's what i'm supposedly good at), going on a bad streak and losing maybe a third of my roll and decide to play some to cash games on the side to make it back. Then I lose about half to two thirds of the money I have left in my bankroll playing cash games and tournaments together. So I switch to SNGs to get a quick, low-variance cash infusion so I can grind the cash games again. Then I win a little in the cash games, restoring my confidence a little so I can afford to go back to tournaments again because it's where I've had the most monetary success. I play a few more, making marginal money finishes, getting incredibly frustrated at how all I do is tread water. So I play cash games on the side again and break even for a while, before losing a bunch more money on some horrifying series of suckouts. Then I lose my mind, realizing I've lost 75% of my bankroll and wonder how I'll ever get playing again. I proceed to waste a lot of time playing ridiculously low limits until making my next score. Lather and rinse, repeat.

It's a terrible pattern. It's busier than Pucci print on a leopard and more destructive than a night out with Lindsay Lohan's entourage. At every step of the way I'm chasing a loss. That's a pretty terrible way to approach poker.

Every time I come off a losing streak I feel like I've figured out what my problem is only to discover I have a new one. The first time I went broke back in November 2004, I realized that it happened because I moved up in limits too quickly. When I built a second roll up from virtually nothing and then lost almost all of it, I realized that tournaments were the leak in my game so I stopped playing them in favor of more limit cash games. Then my plans changed abruptly when I won a $1500 WSOP seat in 2005 and had to become a better MTT player in a hurry. And I came out of that summer and fall a pretty decent MTT player. But I was still dealing with an unstable bankroll. So I tried limit cash games again to build it up. And I went on a legitmate unlucky streak and lost almost everything again. At that point, I really thought about quitting the game altogether. That was right before the blogger trip last December.

Then, over Christmas I went on an unbelievable tournament run, winning over $2K inside of a couple of weeks. I had a bankroll again. I had somehow saved myself.

Then I lost my job.

It should have been a cue for me to take a long long break from poker, but I suddenly had all this time on my hands and a flush bankroll from my tournament wins. Lost and completely unsure of my future, I thought I could at least make some extra cash for myself when I really was in need of it. Of course I was going to drop half of that money within eight weeks. Had I taken this laptop, hurled it into the bathtub, and bought a new one two months later, I still would have saved money. I managed to replenish my roll by the end of April with a few final table scores on Full Tilt, and it was then that I decided to "play what I'm good at" and stick with MTTs for the time being.

As a result, I had a sick May, including my biggest tournament win ever. It should have been all I needed to not only recover, but to really be able to start growing my roll and moving up in limits instead of being perpetually worried about going broke. And if at that time I was a normal person with a normal life and a normal paycheck coming every two weeks, I might have been able to do it. But I'm not, and I wasn't.

Immediately I was faced with the snafu with the unemployment office that made me lose 4 checks, a $2000 emergency room bill after my slip n' slide at the drugstore, and suddenly I needed that money to live on. I hung on to maybe $2000 to play with, but I had no choice but to use the rest to bail me out of those unexpected situations.

One short but bad streak later, I barely have enough left to play $22 SNGs. And that's where I am today. I came back to L.A. from Vegas down several hundred. I played games out there I never should have been playing. It's not like I was suddenly kicking it up to $30-60 or anything, mind you. I just shouldn't have even sat $1-2 no-limit in my financial state, not to mention my mental state over my financial state. I wasn't even rolled for the $4-8 limit games and it both stung and embarrassed me. But I was in Vegas for a month and all I wanted to do was play with my friends.

With $120 in bonus and a week left to clear it on Full Tilt, I went back to girinding away playing $2-4 Omaha Hi-Lo and $3-6 LHE. Of course I lost. Not much at all, really but it was a lot compared to what I had left to work with. So once the bonus was cleared, I started doing nothing but grinding the $22 SNGs. 25 of them later, and I've almost recovered that loss. Always chasing a loss...

My leaks this year haven't been in my poker game. My leaks have been in my life. And that's just as bad as calling a reraise out of position with A7 offsuit. It's not that I'm a bad player. At this point, I think I'm actually a pretty good player. I'm just the worst money manager you'll ever meet and I'm almost always on some sort of tilt. I wake up in the morning and I'm already humming at about 20%. Though I've spent the last six months happier as a person than I've been in a long time, not a day has gone by where I didn't have at least a moment or two when I completely freaked out about money or my future.

So if I come out of this latest streak having learned another new lesson, I suppose it's to never play poker when you're unemployed. But like any Hollywood movie, there's always some glimmer of hope at the end of the third act.

I'm so pleased to tell you that after a long, bloody, soul-searching struggle, I'm well on my way to being fully employed again. I'll be continuing my gig as a featured writer with Pokerblog.com that I began during the WSOP and will be covering the L.A. poker scene. I've also picked up some freelance writing assignments on top of that job that will almost push me back up to an income level I can live with. Thank fucking God. I was just about to start buying soup and ramen noodles in bulk.

At the moment, I have a sad little three-figure bankroll. It sucks, but I know I'll be able to rebuild. After all, I've done it several times before. It's what I'll do when I'm actually rolled again that will be the real challenge. So it's all $22 SNGs all the time for me until I can afford the $33s. I'm avoiding tournaments like a smack addict does needles because I need every drop of ROI possible to go toward rebuilding. Though I still think they're my strongest suit, I can't handle their variance right now.

When I think about my bankroll and its fluctuations, I feel like I've been treading water in a leaking pool for two years now. I can get into the groove for a while and stay afloat, even swim around for a bit, but the minute I notice how far the water level has dropped, I panic, flailing my arms, wasting energy, and only make myself more and more tired until I can no longer paddle. And eventually, I sink until I reach that cement floor and I'm able to spring up to the surface again off the balls of my feet, letting the water carry me like it's supposed to.

I know I shouldn't panic because I can swim. But it doesn't make me any less afraid of drowning.

Jamie Gold: SUED!

I had a feeling this was coming, after hearing all the rumors as the Main Event final table progressed. Chip leader and eventual WSOP champion Jamie Gold only had half of his own action, having verbally promised half of whatever he won to his friend and fellow poker player Crispin Leyser. Speculation has been rampant about the reasoning behind and the specifics of Leyser and Gold's deal in the twelve days that have passed since he captured the largest cash prize in sports history. And now, Poker News is reporting this morning that Leyser has filed suit against Gold in the Las Vegas District Court seeking half of his Main Event winnings. Leyser claims to have copies of voicemails Gold left him on the morning of the final table confirming the 50/50 deal. Gold, who has yet to physically collect his $12 million in winnings from Harrah's, has been consequently blocked from doing so by a Nevada judge until the matter can be resolved.

So what's the backstory? Jamie Gold had some sort of arrangement with Bodog to procure celebrities to play under their banner in the WSOP Main Event. Gold ran into trouble getting it done and turned to his friend, Crispin Leyser (right) for help. Leyser, an instructor at the WPT Boot Camps, bailed Gold out of the situation by securing actor Matthew Lillard's participation. And as a thank you, Bodog offered to buy Jamie Gold into the Main Event. Gold was planning on playing the ME anyway, so he told the Bodog people to give the seat to Leyser. However, (and this is according to Gold himself in an interview on the Canadian poker radio show "Rounders") Bodog had such faith in Gold's poker ability that they wanted only him to take the seat. Straight from the horse's mouth:

"Bodog and I were involved in a production, that we're still developing, which is a radio show not unlike the Howard Stern show. It's an all-celebrity radio show. So we were in business anyway and they said they wanted me to play. They didn't know Crispin. But they knew that I was a great poker player and they'd heard all these stories about Johnny Chan and that I was winning all these tournaments and they said, "Listen, no offense to the celebrities we have on our team, we love them, but the chances of them getting deep in this tournament are very slim. The chances of you... everyone's telling us you're like Kobe Bryant coming out of high school... that you have a chance to make it. We want to see what you can do. You're not allowed to transfer this to Crispin.'"

Here's where it gets shady. Since Crispin was now shit out of luck in terms of a seat AND he'd already done a big favor for Gold in bailing him out of the promise to Bodog that he couldn't keep, Gold offered him half of his take in the Main Event. But, like the poker world itself, neither man imagined that it could get so big. Had Gold cashed for 30 or 40 or even 200 grand, we wouldn't be hearing about any of this.

Definitely check out Gold's lengthy interview on Rounders Radio. It's like pure, priceless verbal vomit for 30 minutes straight. The guy doesn't shut up and thinks he's the greatest player that ever lived. He also publicly challenges Phil Hellmuth to a heads-up match for $1 million and alleges that ESPN producers have already approached him about televising it.

Here's a few more quotes from Gold. Norman Chad allegedly said the following to him after he won.

"I gotta be honest with you, it was the greatest display of poker talent I've ever seen, and I've seen everything. Nobody's ever put on a show like that in the history of poker."

When asked if any of his famous former clients (a la James Gandolfini, Felicity Huffman, and Lucy Liu) had called to wish him well during the tournament Gold gave a classic Hollywood response.

"I am friendly with them, but unfortunately we don't keep up with each other. "

Then there are the questions about whether or not Gold was even a real agent or if it's all one big Hollywood exaggeration. Showbiz gossip giant Defamer was of course on the case, dissecting his client list, and later publishing a letter defending him from one of his actual ex-clients, former soap opera actor Lane Davies, who, according to Gold himself, was indeed the only actor who called and well-wished him during the Main Event.

Mo' money, mo' problems. No wonder he didn't want to win. He knew all this shit would hit the fan.

Ironic, though that he told ESPN that $6 million would be enough for him. Looks like it might be exactly what he'll get.

The 2006 WSOP Main Event premieres tonight on ESPN at 8 PM EDT/ 5 PM Pacific. Set your TiVos, poker fans.