The gambling ramblings of Pauly -- a writer, traveler, and degenerate

 
November Private Tournaments: Saturdays with Dr. Pauly

Shake off your hangovers with a tournament featuring your favorite poker bloggers!!

I would like to cordially invite all readers and bloggers to participate in Saturdays with Dr. Pauly. Thanks to the kind folks over at Poker Stars, they are allowing me to host a series of 4 tournaments on Poker Stars every Saturday in November at 1pm EST. Since everyone already has an account on Poker Stars, this is the perfect place to host the events. My only regret is that Otis cannot play.

The first tournament is scheduled for this Saturday, the 5th. The buy in is low at $10 + 1 and I hope that will get more people to play. These are not associated with the WPBT... they are separate events. Wil Wheaton has been running Friday tournaments so I figured... "Why not another one on Saturdays?"

What: Saturdays with Dr. Pauly
Where: Poker Stars
When: Saturday November 5th at 1pm EST
Tournament Info: #14338880 (check under Private Tournament Tab)
Password: hiltons

Eligibility: Anyone with a Poker Stars account
Attire: Pants optional

Special Prizes & Bounties:
First place (weekly): Phil Gordon's Little Green Book
My Bounty (weekly): Free iTunes Gift Card (Bust me and get 15 free songs!!)
Grubby's Bounty: Visit the Poker Grub for more info
John "Shecky" Caldwell's Bounty: Bust John aka "Shecky" and you get a free Poker News t-shirt and $20 added to your Poker Stars account!

Saturday's with Dr. Pauly Champion... Overall Winner: iPod Nano
Overall 2nd Place: DVD of the Big Lebowski
Overall 3rd Place: Daddy calls you on Christmas to wish you Happy Holidays

Saturdays with Dr. Pauly Tour Dates:
Tournament #1: Sat. November 5th at 1pm EST
Tournament #2: Sat. November 12th at 1pm EST
Tournament #3: Sat. November 19th at 1pm EST
Tournament #4: Sat. November 26th at 1pm EST

Yes, that's not a typo you see. I will also be giving away a special bonus prize... a brand new iPod NANO... to the player who does the best in all four events!! I'll even try to get it engraved for the winner.

Disclaimers: To be eligible for the iPod and DVD, you have to play every Saturday. If you are not of the Christian persausion and finish in 3rd place, you are eligible to get Daddy to call you on any other day of your choice. Offer is valid from December 24th, 2005 thru July 4th 2006.

Here's a loophole: If you are busy with life stuff, and can't play in all 4 tournaments, you can always sign up and post and fold until you get blinded out in order to maintain your eligibility for the free iPod.

How will I determine a Saturdays with Dr. Pauly Champion? Simple. You add up all your places in the four events. The player (that plays in all 4 events) with the lowest total number wins.

Example:

Iggy finishes 5th, 27th, 33th, and 15th. He has 80 points.
Pauly finishes 11st, 119th, 5th, and 25th. He has 160 points.
Derek finishes in 9th, 2nd, 17th, and 54th. He has 82 points.

Iggy would win the iPod beating out Derek by 2 points.

So here's your chance to have fun on a Saturday morning (for you West Coasters), a Saturday afternoon for you East Coasters, or Saturday night for my European friends, bloggers, and readers. In addition you have a shot at winning cool prizes including a brand new iPod. I have no problem if you want to regift the prizes for Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, or Festivus.

Saturdays with Dr. Pauly are a series of small buy-in tournaments... on purpose. It gives you a shot at winning cool gifts for a small investment. Be sure to stick around after you get busted and play cash game tables with your favorite bloggers. That will probably be more fun than the actual tournaments. A couple of years ago, a small group of 10 of us (that group rotated) used to all play small buy-in tourneys on Saturday mornings followed up by cash games. I hope to start that tradition back up this November. So please feel free to stop by and play. Again, these private tournaments are open to all readers and bloggers. This would not be possible without the awesome help from the cool folks over at Poker Stars. Mucho thanks to them.

So who is going to get crowned the Saturdays with Dr. Pauly Champion and walk away with the iPod? Who will come in 3rd and get a phone call from Daddy? Stop by Poker Stars to find out.

Any questions or comments? Shoot me an email. Feel free to pimp the Saturdays with Dr. Pauly tourneys on your blogs, or email your friends and family and tell them all about it. I can't wait. See you Saturday!!

*****

Side Note: Happy Halloween to everyone! I have one more day to go in my 5 day long Las Vegas bender. The Joker and I have been hanging out with spun out hippie girls all weekend long. I have been posting some mini-recaps, pictures, and setlists from Vegoose on the Tao of Pauly. Take a peek. I have a Widespread Panic concert tonight, which should be kick ass. I love Halloween in Las Vegas because it's a time when the weird becomes the norm and all the freaks come out from the wood work and take over Sin City. Plus, Halloween gives average girls their one and only chance a year to get dressed up in slutty costumes and they don't get labeled trashy for doing so. Lots of skin and cleavage. My favorites are the Catholic school girls and sultry cowgirls in short skirts (my new favorite). Cowgirls. Nice.

And Halloween in Las Vegas means plenty of wasted people stumbling around the Strip in odd costumes and gambling their last dollars away. Should be fun. I'll be back tomorrow, if I can survive one more day of debauchery...
posted by Pauly at 10/31/2005 11:57:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Tao of Yahoo

I'm currently on the Las Vegas Strip and I was having dinner with my buddy, professional Keno player Neil Fontenot, and he was discussing the hardships of being a winning Keno player. It was an exciting conversation because there such an emphasis on Taoism these days. Neil pointed out that Keno is losing popularity because it is hard to pick all the numbers because the odds are against them. Neil embraces this fact because he is a nihilist and believes in nothing. He sometimes plays all the numbers.

My roommate Grubby, a professional minature golfer, called me in the middle of dinner and told me I needed to read Yahoo's home page because I was on the front page. And wow, there was the Tao of Poker mentioned on Yahoo because Oprah was discussing Taoism. Thanks to Oprah and Yahoo. But how the hell did I slip behind the Tao of Fuckin' Pooh as most popular Tao sites on the web?


Anyway, I would like to welcome all my new readers via Yahoo. If you want to read some good stuff, check out my archives (June & July) from this summer when I moved to Las Vegas and covered the 2005 WSOP. We also have a cool 2005 WSOP photo gallery.

You might want to read the Best of the Tao of Poker section. That's where I highlight my favorite posts.

Neil wants to get Grubby and myself to play low limit donkey poker at the Excalibur, where we will attempt to tilt the table. More stories to come, stay tuned.

***** Update *****

4:25am PCT... My fifteen minutes of yahoofame are over.

4:30am PCT... Feel free to stop by the Tao of Pauly and read the highlights of my Thursday night in Vegas, where I used farting and stripper in the same sentence.
posted by Pauly at 10/28/2005 01:33:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Grubby Speaks

I interviewed Grubby about the Hammer. You can download the first ever known audio recording of Grubby... here!

You have to scroll down to the bottom of the first page you see and click "Free" then wait 20 seconds before you can download the clip. Trust me, it's worth the hassle and wait!! I hope to have Part II of the Grbby Hammer Interview up by next week.


I went bowling with Grubby and Poker Prof at Sam's Town. I challenged them to a prop bet and said that both of them can take the higher score of the two then add a 20 point handicap. If that score was higher than mine, they would win $10. Of course, I got smoked both times and lost the double-or-nothing. Poker Prof had the high score both games. Not to worry, I expect to get my money back when we play minature golf for $20 a hole later this week.

After bowling, Grubby and I headed to Sunset Station where we played at a $3/6/9 table with a bunch of chain-smoking locals. $3/6/9 is virtually $3/6 limit except, you can bet $9 on the river instead of $6. After Grubby told me I played too tight, I proceeded to win a couple of pots with J-7 and 9-4s. I also a rivered a Broadway straight with A-Q and didn't raise preflop from the blinds in a 6 way pot. There's nothing more satisfying then seeing one player bet into you when you have the nuts, then wacthing another player raise the pot. I three-bet and made it $27 to go. I won a huge pot and walked away up after two hours. I wandered past all the trippy blackjack tables with lava lamps and grabbed another late night shake at Fatburger.

I'm starting a five day old-fashioned Las Vegas bender today. Hunter would be proud of the exploits that I have planned. I'm finally done with the WPT reporting and writing a few parts of the Poker Hacks book for Double As. My work is complete for the month. It's time to celebrate. My buddy the Joker comes to town for the Vegoose music festival where we intend to getting all kinds of loopy. I also got a great Halloween costume. Stop by the Tao of Pauly for pics, setlists, concert reviews, and other sordid tales of Halloween hijinks.

I shall return next week with two special announcements. Hope everyone has a groovy weekend and a Happy Halloween.
posted by Pauly at 10/27/2005 04:20:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Big Pimpin', Bluffin' Locals, & Radio Free Pauly

I've been writing furiously the past few days. I'm under a deadline for the Poker Hacks book with Double As. I'm writing five chapters/hacks/articles and I'm done with 2.5 of them. The 3rd is currently being edited and I've written the first drafts of the last two Hacks inside my head already, so it's just a matter of me putting them down into a Word Document. Yesterday, I also squeezed in writing two freelance articles (one on John Juanda and the other on advantages of playing satellite tournaments). And I published a new issue of Truckin'.

I took a needed break from writing and headed to Green Valley Ranch... a mere five minute ride from chez Grubby or the Hippie Hacienda, which he just nicknamed. Grubby and I ate at Sushi & Sake for their $29 All-U-Can-East sushi. The waitresses are hot Japanese women with tight black dresses and black leather boots that go up to their knees. We decided to keep track of how much everything would have cost if we bought them during regular hours... we would have run up almost a $200 sushi tab. Yikes. The All-U-Can-Eat promotion was seriously -EV for Green Valley Ranch and extremely +EV for Grubby and myself. I posted pictures and blogged what we ate over at the Tao of Pauly.

Since we were at Green Valley, we headed over to the poker room. We both signed up for $1/$2 NL. I heard the $3/$5 NL tables are super juicy where guys with barbed wire tatoos and sunglasses bet $40 preflop on every hand. Anyway, I watched the MLB World Series go into extra innings while I played at a $1/2 blinds $200 NL table. There were one or two tourists sitting there sipping Bud Light's and the rest were locals.

During my session, Charlie Shoten popped in looking for a copy of Poker Player Newspaper. He lives nearby and we spoke for a while. He made the final two tables at the Wynn tournament earlier in the day and he really ejoyed my review of his book No Limit Life. A few of the players at the table were impressed that I knew an actual pro. That's when I let it slip out that I wrote for Fox Sports and covered the WSOP for them. Too bad I went card dead, or I could have run over the table. I got K-K tiwce early and it onl held up one time. One of the regulars folded J-J and showed it after I popped him for a reraise preflop with K-K.

One guy sitting in the far corner had two racks of red $5 chips or well over $1000. He ran up his buy-in by bluffing at a lot of pots, chasing gutshots and hitting them, and playing any King or Ace. He bragged about losing $8K playing blackjack over the weekend and I knew he was an action junkie. He started to bleed away his stack when his over-aggressiveness began to catch up with him. I finally had a chance to play in a pot with him, and then I precced to put the guy on mega-tilt. I'm such an asshole trying to get locals on tilt.

I was in the big blind with X-X. (Keep reading to find out my hand.) The blackjack guy raised the pot to $10. I called along with 5 other players. $70 in the pot.

The flop: Kh-2h-7c.

Perfect flop for the Hammer, eh? I checked, he bet $25 and I dunno why I didn't raise, but I just called. We were three way when a 7 fell on the turn. The pot was about $150 at that point. I checked, he bet $75, another player folded and I watched the blackjack guy show his cards to the old guy sitting next to him. I put him on a weak King or a flush draw since he had been playing crap all night, so I moved all in for about $250. A look of "What the fuck did you just do?" fell over his face. He thought for several minutes holding his cards up. Usually that meant he was going to muck, but he kept counting out chips and talking to himself. I refused to make eye contact and focused on the baseball game that went into extra innings.

He eventually folded on a board of Kh-7c-2h-7s.

"You got trip 7s and I'm folding this," he said as he flipped K-Q face up.

As the dealer pushed me the pot, I flipped over... Kc-Jc. I know you thought I had the Hammer, but I didn't. If he called with K-Q, I would have been properly fucked and sheepishly digging into my pocket for a rebuy. Of course, I finally got someone to fold a better hand, which was a miracle since he was a calling station. Just like Devilfish said to Fossilman, "Never bluff a calling station."

When I told Grubby about the hand, he was shocked that a guy who had been playing that loose did not call. Yeah, I got lucky that he didn't call. He must have put me on A-K or trips. Again, I put him on a weaker hand that he had and I got super lucky and he slowly slipped off into the deep end of the tilt pool.

One of the old guys at the table said, "That's the best move I saw someone make all week!"

The old regular quickly tossed me a $5 chip out of his stack. I think he was pissed that the blackjack guy was sucking out on him all night. I gave the $5 chip to the dealer and for the next 15 minutes the blackjack guy was steaming. He tried to stare me down and intimidate me while muttering under his breath. For a few minutes I actually thought he might try to start a fight with me. I wanted to leave since I doubled up but stayed just in case I could get in another pot with him and get the rest of his chips. He settled down a bit but he was still on full-blown mega-tilt. He donked off about $200 more during that time.

When I had a good session at Foxwoods, I always treated myself to a slice of cheesecake at the deli area. Last night, I walked over to the 24 hour Fatburger in the food court area of Green Valley Ranch. I got a large chocolate shake and I think I like those better than In & Out shakes and Sonic's shakes.

When I got home, I wrote some more and played an SNG on Poker Stars. I took 3rd and cracked K-K with the Hilton Sisters.

*****

And now, the pimpin' begins.

Grubby is having a Hammer contest... sort of. Take a peek and guess at "Hammer can you hear me?"

HDouble has a kick ass post called Shoulders of Giants: Top 10 Poker Reads.

If you are a horse racing fan, check out BG's Breeder's Cup posts.

The Poker Prof has been busy working on a 2005 WSOP Stats and Information Page.

Speaking of the WSOP, the schedule for the 2006 WSOP has been published. You know where I'm gonna be.

Double As also has a contest going on his blog. If you win, you get to rename his blog for a week!

*****

Radio Free Pauly

Due to Sean's hectic schedule, we were unable to tape an interview this week for the Lord Admiral Card Club Radio Show and Podcast. However, I sent in a clip featuring myself and BJ from Card Player Magazine, which I recorded at the Bellagio after the WPT event ended last Friday. Check it out.

If you don't know by now, Card Club the best and longest running podcast dedicated to poker in the universe, and I'm honored that those guys let me be a part! I'm no Joey Jeremiah, but over the last several months, I've become a huge cult figure in Canada thanks to Cinci Sean & Brent Stacks. As always, I'm happy to be a part of their amazing show. Sean and Brent are working hard every week in Toronto to get their podcast done (for free) so stop by and show your support.

My clip begins at 7:00 of the podcast. Columbo also features one of his One Minute Mysteries.

You can download the MP3 of this week's show... Episode 49: Here. (Right Click and Save As)
You can download the MP3 of last week's show... Episode 48: Here. (Right Click and Save As)

If you want to catch up and listen to previous episodes, please visit their archives over at Brainscat. Stop by Card Club at Lord Admiral Radio and check them out. Thanks again to Sean and Stacks and Mark for having me on.

*****

Top 15 Referrals

Thanks to everyone who sent me traffic in the past two weeks (not including Google).

1. Las Vegas and Poker Blog
2. Wil Wheaton
3. Iggy
4. Up for Poker
5. Poker Stars Blog
6. Blogger Championship Blog
7. Card Squad
8. Tao of Pauly
9. Aaron Gleeman
10. Bill Rini
11. The Cards Speak
12. Double As
13. Grubby
14. AlCantHang
15. Jaxia

*****

Truckin' - October 2005, Vol. 4, Issue 10

If you get bored at work, check out issue of Truckin', my literary blogzine. This issue features several new writers (HighonPoker, T-Money, Vinnie the Fish, and Gary Moore) who are readers and fans of Truckin'. Let's hope they will all return sometime in the future. BG is back with another installment of his Langston Saga. And I return with a story about some of my favorite characters... Baby and Winky.

1. Baby and Winky Reprise by Tenzin McGrupp
Baby wiped away the remainder of her tears and slid the gun underneath the passenger's seat. Just a few minutes earlier she had stood barefoot on a cold linoleum kitchen floor and kept firing... More

2. Langston Alone by BG
I let her go with everything I had left, which is to say, it took next-to-nothing to let her go. It was a moment that was dry, devoid of subtext and utterly clinical - at least on my end... More

3. Toy Box by Gary Moore
This toy box would only hold his best toys, the ones he wanted to take special care of. Anything he wanted to protect, anything he wanted to save, anything he wanted to keep from being destroyed, would go in this box... More

4. The Miracle John by T-Money
Problem was is that I was on a stretch of 131N where there is nothing. No gas stations off the side of the road. No party store. Hell, not even a fruit stand... More

5. Message in a Bottle by HighonPoker
Nine to five in an office environment is supposed to be hell for a cubicle monkey. But I'm not a cubicle monkey. I'm a junior executive. I should know better. And somehow, I do... More

6. The Chase by Vinnie the Fish
I wanted to thank you once again for helping us put a criminal in jail," were the parting remarks from the police officer before we ended our conversation... More

posted by Pauly at 10/26/2005 04:54:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Hammers, Hilton Sisters, Dial-a-Shots, and other Post-Modern Poker Vernacular

I got three emails last week asking me to clarify what a "Dial-a-Shot" was. I forwarded one to Al Cant Hang and he got a huge laugh out of it. Recently I've stumbled across several new bloggers boasting about dropping the Hammer in their home game or online during an SNG at Poker Stars. Random acts of destruction at the poker table always make me warm and fuzzy inside but it made me wonder if everyone knew they actually knew the origins of the Hammer? Where did it come from? And why is it called the Hammer?

With those thoughts festering inside the hallways of my mind over the weekend, I decided to take some time and discuss some words that have become an everyday part of poker blogger's vocabulary.


The Hammer

Definition: 7-2o
Creator/Credit: Grubby

The specific definition of the Hammer is 7-2o played out of the blinds for a preflop raise. 72s is the "Suited Hammer" although I've often referred to 72s as the "Swedish Hammer." I've often heard 8-3o referred to as the "Canadian Hammer."

The Hammer came from one of Grubby's home games back in DC before he moved to Las Vegas. One regular played 7-2o a lot and the other players decided to call that hand the Hammer because it happened to be that guy's last name.

When I first started reading poker blogs over two years ago, there were less than a dozen. Grubby's The Poker Grub was one that I read everyday because his sense of humor and excellent writing skills made him an instant favorite read of mine. I couldn't wait to read about how many SNGs in a row Grubby played before going to bed or what he ate at Wendy's that day. He also held cool contests on his blog like the Hammer Challenge. If you got 7-2o online and played it in any ring game, won it at showdown, and typed "Hammer!" into the chat, you would won the jackpot if you emailed Grubby the hand history. The progressive jackpot started at $5 and increased $5 everyday until it was hit, capping at $250. Grubby also threw in a wallet and a T-shirt to the winner. He only a few of them, and every possible poker blogger did their best to drop the Hammer during the ring games. Intrepid Card Player, Stick & Move, and The Poker Penguin each won Grubby's Hammer Challenge. The longest it went was almost 2 weeks when the Poker Penguin won $65. It was usually cracked in 3 or 4 days.

"I knew The Hammer officially made it when I saw it mentioned on Wikipedia," Grubby said in a recent interview with the NPR.

The Hammer is also a philosophy and a reminder that especially in No Limit, you do not need playable cards to win. Playing the Hammer and showing it is also a great way to mix up your playing style and getting other players on tilt in the process.

The Hammer has become a mantra for some bloggers, a part of the logo for the unofficial logo for the WPBT, and an original contribution to the world of poker. I will get wicked goosebumps the day I hear it announced during a televised poker tournament.

This past year, I decided that we set aside February 7th to celebrate St. Grubby's Day. On 2-7, all poker players pay homage to Grubby and blast the hell out of their tables with The Hammer. So now you know the origins of the Hammer.


The Hilton Sisters

Definition: Q-Q
Creator/Credit: Vince Van Patten

I'm often incorrectly given credit for coining the term the Hilton Sisters. I never invented it. I heard WPT announcer Vince Van Patten say it during an episode and since then I've been using it on my blog. I've definitely beat it to a dead horse. Much like Paris and Nicky Hilton, pocket Queens are overrated and if you are not careful, they'll totally fuck you over and you'll go home broke and heart broken. And yes, Q-Q is my favorite hand. I'm a glutton for punishment. I've won some huge hands with them over the past two years and I've also lost my fair share of pots with them too. I have a love hate relationship with Q-Q. Hell, Hiltons are better than J-J, right?

I think the hardest part abut Q-Q is that people are deathly afraid and intimidated with the hand. It's a strong hand preflop that's extremely vulnerable post flop. So why do I play the Hilton Sisters so hard and fast? You cannot slow play two chicks who spend more money on shoes in a week than you have in your entire bankroll.

Inspired by Grubby, I've held Hilton Sister Challenges before where I give away a Pauly Painting to any blogger who cracked A-A with Q-Q. It was won by 4 bloggers including my brother! I've actually seen my Pauly Painting hanging up in Bad Blood's Den in G-Vegas. Joanne said she's seen the one hanging in her brother's Rod's apartment. And although Minnesota is one of 4 US states I have never visited, my art work hangs in the house of a Professional Poker Player.

Here are some previous winners:

Hilton Sisters Challenge 1: Chris Halverson and Bad Blood
Hilton Sisters Challenge 3: Derek from Poker in the Weeds
Hilton Sisters Challenge 4: Jordan from Hurty Gurty
Hilton Sisters Challenge 6: Rod

G-Vegas

Definition: Greenville/Greer, South Carolina
Creator/Credit: Up for Poker (CJ. Otis & G-Rob) and Bad Blood

"Where the fuck is G-Vegas?" Someone once wrote me in an email. Well it's in the heart of the Deep South, where the locals call soda pop "cokes" and BBQ is a noun, verb, adverb, and adjective. It's also the area of the country were several famous internet celebrities currently live or once lived. The first time I ever set foot in G-Vegas, I was 18 years old and whacked out after eating a fistful of mushrooms. G-Vegas is the place where I first had mayonnaise on a hamburger... and liked it. G-Vegas is where I chopped first place (with Wes Arggggggh!) in the Brad-o-Ween V Poker Tournament. And yes G-Vegas is where the annual Drunk-o-lympics takes place. I'm still in awe that Lefty ate an entire bag of cheese puffs before BigMike.


Dial-a-Shot

Definition: When you are about to do a shot (SoCo preferably), you call up someone (preferably in another city) and they do a shot simultaneously on the other line
Creator/Credit: AlCantHang

Way before AlCantHang embraced the 21st century and purchased a cell phone, he would use his lovely wife EvaCanHang's phone and call me up at odd hours along with other bloggers for a Dial-a-Shot. 96% of the time he was at the Boathouse with BigMike at his side hoisting a shot of the nectar of the Gods and toasting good wishes to his friends. Since the inception in 2004, Dial-a-Shots have been done in over 43 states, 4 Canadian Provinces, several countries in the European Union, the United Kingdom, Central America, Gibraltar, in strip clubs in Las Vegas, on the floor of the WSOP, and even some dude in Sri Lanka got one when a drunken AlCantHang dialed a wrong number by accident.

Dial-a-Shots are a great excuse to get Albert Finney drunk and ramble on incessantly while clogging up someone's voicemail with verbal sewage and soused banter. Only under the terms and conditions of a Dial-a-Shot can you get away with calling one of your friends a fat fuck for going to bed early, or calling up a celebrity and telling him he's a pussy for not picking up his phone, or professing your undying love to one of your lesbian friends who one day you hope will start playing for the other team.

There are other variations of Dial-a-Shots. For you alcoholics who sit at home and tinker on IM at odd hours of the night, you have IM-a-Shots. For you stoners and potheads, there's the Dial-a-Bong or Dial-a-Puff. I even got a Text-a-Shot once.


The Kournikova

Definition: K-Qo
Creator/Credit: F Train

F Train is a regular at the Blue Parrot in NYC. He was the one who first spoke of K-Qo being just like "Anna Kournikova... looks good, but never wins." F Train is a guy who's played plenty of hands online and logged a ton of hours in various NYC clubs, in LA and Las Vegas casinos, and in Atlantic City. If he says K-Qo never wins, then I believe him. Just like Anna Kournikova, K-Qo will look sweet to the eye at first glance, but in the end it's a loser and ends up face down in the muck.


Kicked in the Junk

Definition: The sick feeling you get in your testicular region several moments after a bad beat
Creator/Credit: The Poker Penguin

Back in 2003, The Poker Penguin posted everyday and he wrote some of the best philosophical posts on the web, especially his observations on Schrodinger's Cat. He was the first blogger to use "kicked in the junk" regularly in describing his losing sessions online.


So there you have it. A quick refresher course in poker terminology. I've tired to incorporate every single term in an article for Fox Sports or Poker Player Newspaper and other various organizations that I write for. The Hammer seems to be the one phrase that has a chance to go all the way to the top and I can't wait until the day comes when Vince Van Patten says, "Oh I can't believe he won a pot with The Hammer!"
posted by Pauly at 10/25/2005 01:57:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Poker Stars Blogger Championships Results and Recap

The big day arrived and I logged in to play in the Blogger Championship on Poker Stars. 1473 players entered with the winner heading to the Bahamas for a free seat into the WPT Poker Stars Caribbean Adventure. There were plenty of other prizes including a 24" Fat Screen Monitor for 2nd through 6th place, X Boxes for places 7-16, iPod Nanos for 17-36 and Hats & Tshirts for places 37-99. Of course Poker Stars was kind enough to put out a bounty on my head... a free hat and tshirt which was won my terrymr when he busted me in 932nd place. I heard that Daddy took me in a prop bet against Bad Blood. Too bad I didn't last longer.

Congrats to Easy Wind who is the lucky focker going to the Bahamas! He outlasted 1472 other players and a tough table that was 2/3 full of European players, including 4 from the United Kingdom. Here's who made the final table (courtesy of Otis):

1. easy_wind (Cambridge, MA)
2. simonvlc (Valencia, Spain)
3. Ribs (Warrington, United Kingdom)
4. mattymillne (Edinburgh, United Kingdom)
5. Sunday8pm (Edmunds, United Kingdom)
6. butwin (Cypress, CA)
7. Lucky Poet (Oslo, Norway)
8. maverick81 (Crowborough, United Kingdom)
9. MrAckley (Anchorage, AK)

I had a great time and I hope that Poker Stars will do this for the EPT Monte Carlo event and future WPT events. It's always fun playing with your friends and meeting readers of my blog for the first time at the tables. People were saying a lot of funny stuff to me. I got plenty of Redneck Riviera jokes and one guy even asked me, "Pauly do you like gladiator movies?"

It's a quote from Airplane! and cracked me up.

Moving on...

I don't have too many highlights. Mostly everyone at my table was sitting out so I played extra aggressive to pick up chips early.

4:00pm... Cards were in the air.

4:01pm... The TV table featured Al Cant Hang, Wil Wheaton, and G Rob.

4:02pm... I had Dave O'Callahan at my starting table who is a third generation poker player from Ireland. He's buddies with Mike Lacey and Tom Murhpy from Antes Up. I met him in Barcelona for the EPT event. He was at the feature TV table and I had a beer with him during one of the breaks.

4:12pm... Derek dropped the Hammer

4:20om... With 6-6, I flopped a set on a board of 6-7-8. The turn was a 7 and I had a boat. I slow played the flop and the turn and called small bets both times. On the river, I check raised a small amount and was caled with 7-6o. Ouch. I'm lucky he didn't bet more.

4:49pm ... I doubled with with A-A vs. 4-4. I had T2700.

4:56pm... K-K does not get paid off.

5:17pm... I busted out when I went all-in on a steal with 8-9s against a limper and both blinds wp were sitting out. He called with A-2 and rivered an ace on me after I flopped a pair of 8s. I was out in 932rd place. Terrymr won a bounty. Congrats!

Bobby Bracelet played great and had some guy berating him in the chat. Here's a sample of the assclown's tirade:

Assclown42 [observer]: I HOPE YOU DIE MOTHERUCKER
Assclown42 [observer]: ****IN PILE OF DIRTY SEWER ****
Assclown42 [observer]: BOB YOU AINT NOTHING BUT A QUAZIMOTO HUNCHBACK BELL RINGING *****

I got a kick out of it. Bobby and April both played great, along with Chris Halverson, Mourn, Poker Geek, Lifes a Grand, Hagbard, Tuscaloosa Johnny, Kid Dynomite, and ScottMcMillian.

Congrats to again to Easy Wind who won the first ever Bloggers Championship when he beat simonvlc of Spain heads up! Easy Wind won three crucial pots late in the tournament. One was an amazing call with A-5o and two clubs on the board. He had middle pair and was check raised byRibs who moved all in. Easy Wind called and Ribs missed his flush draw. That was a $2M pot. A few minutes later, he would knock Ribs out when he flopped a nut flush draw and top pair. He turned his flush and Ribs was eliminated in 3rd place.

On the winning hand, simonvlc was outchipped almost 6 to 1. With 9-4o, Easy Wind caught some of the flop and bet out. simovlc moved all in over the top with just ace high and Easy Wind called. His hand held up and he won the 2006 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Prize Package. Great job!

Here are some bustouts of bloggers that I know of. If I missed you, I apologize in advance. Feel free to leave your ranking in the comments and if I get off my lazy ass on Monday, I'll add it and might even get around to coding the hyperlinks to everyone's blog!

Noteable Eliminations:
1450 Pinky
1405 -EV
1400 Drizz
1398 Mr. Decker
1389 Dave O'Callahan
1378 BZZ Ghost
1367 Lefty
1358 GameCock
1355 Maigrey
1347 Donkey Puncher
1334 Mr. Subliminal
1309 Duggle Bogey
1307 VaRoadster
1301 The Fat Guy
1289 Jeff from Rants of a Young Mind
1267 Jen Leo
1247 Sell the kids
1238 Columbo
1226 TrumpJosh
1221 MtDewVirus
1195 TP
1179 JoeSpeaker
1164 Brandon Schaefer
1088 Easy Cure
1071 Rod
1040 Grubby
1020 AlCantHang
1003 AEQ

986 Skitch
973 Maudie
972 Poker Prof
970 Tokyo James
966 Buffalo66
957 TripJax
953 EvaCanHang
949 Whiskeytown
933 Pauly
922 787 style
902 DrChacko
901 Iggy
900s World of Jim
885 Poker Chronicles
865 Human Head
860 SeattleJohn
838 Helix
817 CJ
801 corey_m
799 Joaquin THE ROOSTER
779 Boy Genius
656 SirWaffle
637 Wicked Chops
623 Shane Nickerson
617 Jan from 50 Outs

541 StB
525 Sloshr
517 GCox
495 Steeler Josh
489 BADBLOOD
454 F Train
451 Felicia
439 Bill Rini
438 Jaxia
433 Shelly
421 Bugsy99
419 CHAD
416 HighonPoker
415 Slayre
400 Shirley Rosario
399 obieVIP
394 Gary Casron
380 EPHRO
357 GRob

354 Alan from Geek & Proud
336 RicoM
334 Joanne
328 Wil
318 DNasty
317 Stannum
316 Ugarte
295 Glyphic
265 Howard
259 Derek
255 Jorgen
254 Double As
251 Tully Mox
247 Chris from Cy Poker
246 Tanya aak MissT74
244 Perfomity
240 Will Wonka
236 Daddy
235 SparkyR
229 ScurvyDog
212 Mr Parx
204 Mean Gene
198 Mr Reed
197 SoxLover
196 California April
181 Chipper
173 Dragonystic
172 Gracie
170 On_THG
167 Russ Fox
163 Boobie Lover
160 BSN
151 Poker Nerd
143 Patrick from Suited Aces
141 PotCommitted
139 Spaceman
138 Predator314
125 T
115 Falstaff
108 King George

Money People:
74 Mourn
68 April (Texas)
58 Poker Geek
42 Lifes a Grind
39 Big Pirate
34 Hagbard
28 Bobby Bracelet
26 Jarooty
21 Professional Poker Player Chris Halverson
17 Tuscaloosa Johnny
15 Kid Dynomite
14 ScottMcMillian

Congrats again to everyone who made the money. Congrats again to the winner Easy Wind! Thanks again to everyone at Poker Stars including Ryan and Otis. Let's hope they do this again next week.

******

Update: My comments section is currently down for some unknown reason. I got a man on a job -- I found some dude with duct tape, a blow torch, and a screwdriver and he's hard at work fixing the comments section. Feel free to shoot me an email in the meantime if the comments section is still down!

By the way, congrats to StB of Beer City Poker who wont he blogger essay contest!!

Apologies to Halverson, who I left off my list during the inital publication of this entry!!
posted by Pauly at 10/24/2005 04:20:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Saturday Night Twang in Vegas and Who's Going to the Bahamas?

Yesterday, I woke up early after a few hours of sleep and had to write a ton of stuff before my Party Poker affiliates freeroll late in the afternoon, where I finished in an unimpressive 212 out of 213. Ouch. My junk is still swollen from the bad beat.

Afterwards, Grubby and I headed to Sunset Station so he can pick up his weekly free gift. Grubby gets tons of free shit from the locals casinos. My favorite free item is a scale that he got, which I use everytime before I get into the shower. It's a reminder that I need to lose weight and exercise more.

The lovely Jaxia is in town and I got to meet another blogger for the first time. Since I know she reads me almost everyday, I have to say really nice things about her! The easy part is that I don't have to fluff this entry up, because what I have to say is 100% true. Jaxia is what I call a "triple threat." She's smart, cool, and beautiful. Too bad she's taken, because I was smitten. I think it's the Texas accent. Cute girls with accents get me everytime, and twice on Saturdays.

Anyway, let me wipe the drool off my laptop and continue.

We met up for drinks at Mandalay Bay near the Sports Book. The last time I was there was on Monday with Grubby and Bobby Bracelet and the now infamous bathroom fucking scene unfolded. Last night, Grubby was playing $2/4 in the poker room with two of his female friends who live here that are just getting into poker. Jaxia was over at the Bellagio killing the $4/8 game and came down to meet me. She had no idea how far the Mandalay Bay was from the Bellagio, so she walked! That was impressive. Lucky for her it was not too hot outside.

I sat and had drinks with Jaxia after I got cold-decked on a video poker machine waiting for her arrival. We sat chatted for a few hours, mostly about non-poker things, which was refreshing. We jumped back and forth between a ton of random topics. Sometimes you meet a poker blogger for the first time and the conversation is 99% about poker. That's great sometimes, but these days, I'm getting so burnt out on poker that it was invigorating to discuss other common interests.

Jaxia has had an interesting life and I hope she'll submit a future story or two for Truckin'. She asked me about some specifics about the Redneck Riviera (I even pointed it out to her) and she told me a hilarious story involving a goat. Well, four actually. I'm hoping that she'll write up that wicked tale up... Jaxia and the Four Goats. I love a good goat story.

OK, what make people interesting to me are their odd quirks. I have plenty, too many to list in a blog entry. But Jaxia... the girl loves sugar. Grubby, his friends, Jaxia, and myself went to the cafe at Mandalay Bay for some late night food. We counted how many sugar packets Jaxia used for her coffee. 12 for two cups. Sweet Jebus.

"Twelve fuckin' packets? Why don't you just do cocaine?" I suggested after I sipped her cup.

"Sugar is cheaper," she quickly answered.

I think I'm gonna start snorting sugar.

Anyway, I have to go. I'm checking into a hotel in an hour so I can play in the Bloggers Championship on Poker Stars later today. The winner gets a free trip to the Bahamas to play in a WPT event. There are like 40,000 players signed up as of now. And I don't read like 39,000 of them. The chances that I get seated at a t able with anyone I know will be slim.

For the record, I will not be live blogging this event. I repeat, I will not be live blogging this event. But check back on Monday for a recap. I'm sure I'll have a bad beat story or three.

If you are a reader who would like to watch some of your favorite bloggers, internet celebrities, and poker pros with blogs... then feel free to download the Poker Stars software. It's free to download. It starts at 1pm Pacific time or 4pm East Coast time. Check the "Private Tournament" tab and look for the "PokerStars Blogger Championship" which will be in green font.

See you there. Good luck everyone.
posted by Pauly at 10/23/2005 12:43:00 PM | Permalink |

 
WPT Bellagio Final Table Random Pictures


"Cheers!"
Pauly with BJ at the announcer's table
(Courtesy of Foiled Coup)


Winner's shot


Bellagio chicks during the money presentation


I could see the water show from where I sat


Thanks!


They also give away a free chip set!

posted by Pauly at 10/22/2005 08:39:00 AM | Permalink |

 
WPT Doyle Brunson North American Classic - Final TV Table

This is it! We are back in the Fontana Room at the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas for the taping of the final table for the North American Doyle Brunson Classic.

420 players entered the 4 day $10,000 event with hopes of winning a first place prize of $1 million. The winner also gets a free seat in the $25K WPT Championships at the Bellagio. Some of the top names in poker played in this prestigious event and it was great to see some familiar faces at the final table.

With three big stacks and three small stacks, it's gonna be interesting. We could possibly see a Minh Ly/Dan Harrington heads up match up, but I'm sure the young gun Gavin Smith will try to sneak in there.

Here's who will be playing today, including seat assignments and chip counts:

Seat 1: Tony Grand $118K
Seat 2: Minh Ly $3.056M
Seat 3: Dan Harrington $2.937M
Seat 4: Don Zewin $552K
Seat 5: Gavin Smith $1.368M
Seat 6: Jan Sorensen 370K

Here are today's payouts:
1st place = $1,060,000
2nd place = $620,730
3rd place = $327,610
4th place = $189,630
5th place = $137,940
6th place = $96,560

Stay tuned for live blogging updates.

6:20pm... Right now, the crowd is seated ad the crew is testing the lights.


6:25pm... I'm sitting in Press Row in between Jen from Poker Wire and Foiled Coup from Poker Pages. (You are welcome for the plug Amy!)

6:30pm... I got a last longer bet in the "media pool" with BJ from Card Player and Heather from Poker Wire. I took Dan Harrington, BJ has Minh Ly, and Heather has Gavin Smih.

6:40pm... Charlie Shoten is in the house!

6:45pm... I've been playing cash games on Poker Stars with a bunch of bloggers including Wil Wheaton.

6:57pm... The crew asked the crowd to clap so they could tape it for the show. We did 6 takes and my hands hurt from clapping so hard! Does this get me a SAG card?

7:22pm... Human Head took 4th in the Wil Wheaton tourney on Poker Stars. Great job!

7:34pm... Players are being introduced.

7:36pm... "Shuffle up and deal!" Cards are in the air.

7:50pm... Tony Grand is 81 years old folks! Talk about quite a feat to survive make a final table in a 4 day event.

8:04pm... Dan Harrington won a $500K against Minh Ly with A-3 when he flopped an ace.

8:07pm... We have our first all-in heads up hand. Gavin Smith has 3-3 and Tony Grand has A-10. Tony had the Ace of hearts and flopped three hearts. Tony caught a flush on the turn and doubled up.

8:13pm... Tony Grand has 10-10 and Don Zewin has A-Q and both players were all in preflop. Zewin flopped an Ace and took the lead. The turn and river did not help Tony Grand and he was the sixth place finisher. He won $96,560 and became the oldest player to make a WPT final table. Here's the most recent chip count:

1 Dan Harrington $3.3M
2 Minh Ly $3M
3 Gavin Smith $1.1M
4 Don Zewin $720K
5 Jan Sorensen $300K

8:23pm... Don Zerwin moved all in with 7-7 and Jan Sorenson called with 5-5. Jan Sorenson's hand did not improve and hee was eliminated in 5th place. He won $137,940.

8:45pm... Bouncin Round the Room: Players are on a break. And now... back by popular demand.

Last 5 Pros I Took a Piss Next To:
1. Gavin Smith
2. Ted Forrest
3. Dan Harrington
4. Minh Ly
5. Erick Lindgren

8:52pm... We're on a new level. Blinds are $25K/50K with $5K antes. Here's an updated chip count:

1 Dan Harrington $ 3.16M
2 Minh Ly $2.885M
3 Don Zewin $1.22M
4 Gavin Smith $1.125M

8:55pm... With an Ace on the flop, Gavin Smith moved all in with A-Q against Dan Harrington's A-10s. Gavin Smith's hand held up and he doubled up against Harrington.

9:32pm... Action has slowed down a bit. Here's an updated chip count:

1 Gavin Smith $2.65M
2 Dan Harrington $2.5M
3 Minh Ly $2.16M
4 Don Zewin $650K

9:52pm... Dan Harrington won a hand off of Minh Ly with 9-9. He is now tied for the chiplead.

9:54pm... We're at a new level. Blinds are $40K/$80K with $10K antes.

10:20pm... Players are currently on a break. Minh Ly has over $3M in chips.

10:24pm... While on a break, I bumped into a reader of my blog... Chris from Raleigh, NC. He pointed at the bathroom and asked if that was "the bathroom" where the couple were fucking in the stall next to me. I laughed and told him it was at Mandalay Bay. Always great to meet a fan. And damn, that athroom story has been getting a lot of mileage this week.

10:34pm... Don Zerwin doubled up with K-K against Dan Harrington's A-J. Action Dan lost a good part of his stack. Harrington, Gavin Smith, and Zerwin all have about the same amount of chips with $1.5 to Minh Ly's $3M.

10:55pm... While action has slowed down, I'm gonna post two pics that Curtis aka Special K took today.

WPT Hostess: Courtney Friel


Doyle & Courtney
11:11pm... We're on a new level. Blinds are $60/$120K with $15K antes.

11:19pm... BJ told me that we are on hand #99. I think he just wanted to see his named blogged.

11:26pm... Gavin Smith has almost $4M in chips! Harrington is the short stack with $800K.

11:59pm.... Players went on a break and I made a run to the Snack Bar next to Light, one of the more hip clubs here in Las Vegas. The chicks in line were slammin' hot! I could tell they were wet when they saw my cool PRESS badge.

12:01am... Here's an updated chip count:

1 Minh Ly $2.945
2 Gavin Smith $2.79M
3 Dan Harrington $1.78M
4 Don Zewin $825K

12:25am... We're at a new level. Blinds are $100K/$200K with a $10K ante.

12:28am... Finally some action!! Minh Ly raised on the button and Harrington came over the top all in with K-J versus Minh Ly's 9-9. The flop didn't help Harrington, but he turned a King and his fans in the crowd went wild. The river did not help Minh Ly and Dan Harrington doubled up.

12:35am... Minh Ly moved all in with his shortstack. He had J-J and Dan Harrington called with 8-8. The flop was Q-Q-Q and the turn and river did not help Harrington. Minh Ly got most of his chips back.

12:45am... Dan Harrington went all in with 9c-7c. Don Zewin called with 9-9 and had Harrington dominated. The flop had a 7 and two clubs. The Harrington-heads went wild because Action Dan picked up a flush draw. When the 10 of clubs spiked on the river, the room erupted in applause. Harrington survived his all in and Don Zewin was eliminated in 4th place. He won $189,630. There was a good four plus hours in between eliminations. There are three players remaining. Dan Harrington has about $3M in chips. Gavin Smith has about $2.7 and Minh Ly has $2.6M.

12:53am... Minh Ly moved all in with K-8o. Gavin Smith took several minutes before he eventually called with A-7s. Minh Ly flopped a King and took the lead. Gavin Smith's hand did not improve and he was crippled. Minh Ly became the chipleader on that hand with over $5M.

12:55am... Gavin Smith moved all in with his short stack with 10-2o. Fitting hand since this is the Doyle Brunson North American Classic and the 10-2 was named after Brunson when he won back to back WSOP main events with 10-2. Dan Harrington called with 8-4s and flopped an 8 and turned a 4 to send Gavin Smith home in 3rd place. He won $327,610 for 3rd place.

12:57am... The Bellagio Babes are coming in for the money presentation. They are wearing sexy black coktail dresses and carrying cash in the Stetson hats like the one Texas Dolly often wears. We now have the anticipated match up between Minh Ly and Dan Harrington. Minh Ly is one of the best cash game players in the world and plays in Doyle Brunson's Big Game. And Harrington is considered one of the best tournament players in the world and has made four final tables at the WSOP main event. Minh Ly holds the chip lead with $5.02M to $3.375M.

1:11am... On hand #131 of the final table and during the first hand of heads up play, both players moved all in preflop. Minh Ly showed K-J and Dan Harrington flipped over A-J. The flop was all rags and the turn and river did not help Minh Ly. Dan Harrington doubled up and now has well over $6.75M to Minh Ly's $1.6M.

1:22am... Minh Ly moved all in with 10-9o and Dan Harrington called with A-9o. The flop was: Q-10-6. Minh Ly took the lead and his hand held up.

1:35am... Both players are about even in chips.

1:45am... New level. Blinds are $150K-$300K with $30K antes.

1:51am... Dan Harrington moved all in with A-5 agianst Minh Ly's J-3. Minh Ly had the chip advantage. The flop was: 3-6-9 and Minh Ly took the lead. The turn was a King and the river was a Jack and Minh Ly won the WPT Doyle Brunson North American Classic. Minh Ly will take home a cool $1,060,000 for first place along with a seat in the WPT Championships next April here at the Bellagio. Dan Harrington won $620,730 for second place.


2005 WPT Doyle Brunson
North American Champion: Minh Ly


Final 2: Action Dan Harrington & Minh Ly


Minh Ly with Mike Sexton, Vince Van Patten, and Courtney Friel
That's it for now. You can read my recap and see pictures of this spectacular event and over at Las Vegas and Poker Blog and Poker Player Newspaper.

The next WPT event and poker tournament that I will be covering is the WPT Foxwoods in mid-November. See you there. Thanks for reading and checking in.
posted by Pauly at 10/21/2005 08:38:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Wil Wheaton Private Tourney Reminder + WPT Final Table

Two quick things... the WPT will be taping the final table of the Doyle Brunson North American Classic in the Fontana Room in the Bellagio at 7pm tonight. Look for me. I'll be wearing all black. Here's who made the final WPT TV table including seating assignments and chip counts, courtesy of Poker Wire:

Seat 1: Tony Grand 118K
Seat 2: Minh Ly 3.056M
Seat 3: Dan Harrington 2.937M
Seat 4: Don Zewin 552K
Seat 5: Gavin Smith 1.368M
Seat 6: Jan Sorensen 370K

I wrote a recap of Day 3 for Poker Player Newspaper. Take a peek.

Also, here are the details of tonight's Wil Wheaton tournament:

What: WWdN: Decker711 Invitational
Where: PokerStars
When: Friday, October 21th @ 7:00 PM EST
Password: monkey
Tournament number: 13788952 (Look under Private Tournament Tab)
Buy-in: $10+1

I will not be able to play due to work obligations. However, best of luck to everyone who's gonna play. Joanne won last week's tournament and my brother also made the final table.

If you would like to play, but do not have a Poker Stars account... then what are you waiting for? Download their software... here!

***** Update *****

4:20pm... I signed up at the last second and played in the car on the way to the Bellagio, thanks to my new broadband wireless card. I should have just post & folded and played when I got to press row in the Fontana Room. Big mistake on my part. But I might have been violating Nevada Gaming Laws. At any rate, I pushed with any draw, any ace, and any suited connectors and wa sbusted in 132nd place. Good luck to everyone still remaining.

5:15pm... Derek was busted in 82nd and Joanne finished 89th. Poker Prof is currently in the Top 30! Heather is the chip leader.
posted by Pauly at 10/21/2005 04:20:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Doyle Brunson North American Classic - Day 3

I'm back at the Bellagio. The WPT crew is setting up the final table in the Fontana Room, so we have to retreat to the poker room where the final 5 tables are being played. There is no room for media on the floor, so they opened up Bobby's Room for us to work in. Yes, this might be the only time I'll ever be allowed in Bobby's Room. This is kinda like getting to work in the locker room from Yankee Stadium. I challenged BJ from Card Player to a heads up freeze out... according to the Big Game rules! $4K/$8K blinds. BJ declinded. Good thing. I wouldn't even be able to afford one big blind.

Anyway, last night I played cards with Grubby and Bad Blood. We stormed the castle and played donkey poker at the Excalibur. Yes, I donked off $100. Actually it was $70. I dropped a good $30 in tips and prop bets. Grubby, Bad Blood, and I got to sit at the same table and we were betting on "wheel spins." The money wheel at Excalibur has 3 colors and we'd each pick one. I lost every single fuckin' prop bet. Bad Blood cleaned up.

One guy sat down at our table and Grubby turned to me and suggested that we get the new guy on tilt. And we did. The poor fucker blew through his stack and didn't know what hit him. Hhe lost two big hands to me and Grubby. I had the Hammer one time and Grubby rivered the Wheel with 2-6o. The guy was wicked pissed and stormed off. Yes, we are officially evil. Afterwards, we headed out to a strip club and spent almost four hours at Sin. Yikes. I dropped $300 in a strip club without buying one cocktail. I was driving and had two Red Bulls.

Some quick pimpgae before I begin my live blogging updates...

1. Jen Leo is in town doing a book signing this weekend.
2. Wil Wheaton is throwing a private tournament tomorrow on Poker Stars at 7pm EST. Visit here for more details.
3. Read my recap of yesterday's action at Poker Player Newspaper.
4. If you want a quick recap of my trip to a strip club, head over to the Tao of Pauly.
5. You can check out Special K and Flipchip's photo gallery of Festa al Lago... here.

Moving on...

Today is Day 3 and we will play down to the final table. There are several big names left and 39 players remain. Ernie Scherer begins today the chip leader with $675K. The average stack is around $215K.

***** Live Blogging Update *****

12:10pm... Cards are in the air. We are starting with Level 13. The blinds are $3K/6K with a $500 ante. Here are today's payouts:

1 $1,060,000
2 $620,730
3 $327,610
4 $189,630
5 $137,940
6 $96,560
7 $68,970
8 $55,175
9 $48,280
10 $41,380
11-15 $34,485
16-20 $27,590
21-30 $20,690
31-40 $17,245
41-50 $13,795
51-100 $12,000

12:25pm... Matt Lefkowitz's A-A were cracked by Gus Hansen's K-K when Gus flopped a King. Matt Lefkowitz finished in 39th place. He won $17,245.

12:30pm... Doyle Brunson walked into Bobby's Room and we challenged him to a game! He laughed in our faces. The Bellagio is playing 80s music in Bobby's Room.

12:35pm... Here is the Courtey Friel picture of the day.

12:40pm... Eskimo Clark was eliminated by 2005 WSOP braceelt winner Jan Sorenson from Denmark. Eskimo had A-K Sorenson had K-10. They both flopped a King but Sorensen rivered a Ten. Eskimo Clark finished in 38th place and won $17,245.

12:45pm... Jim McManus was eliminated in 37th place and won $17,245. I wonder if got Big Jim got some fodder for his NY Times article?

12:55pm... Wayne Lewis had 10-10 and ran into Minh Ly's A-A. Lewis finished in 36th place. He won $17,245.

12:57pm... For all you Rodeen fans... Rodeen Talebi was eliminated in 35th place and won $17,245.

1:01pm... Jesus 1, Bill Edler 0. Yes, Jesus Ferguson sent Bill Elder to the rail in 34th place, when Jesus's K-K held up. What's the deal with all these jucied hands early? Live poker is so rigged.

1:06pm... The players keep dropping out. At this rate we'll be done by 4:20 in time for me for a mid-afternoon session. Craig Hartman was knocked out by Minh Ly in 33rd place.

1:10pm... Jesus 2, Arnold Spee 0. Jesus is on a tear. He busted another player when his A-K out flopped 7-7. Arnold Spee finished in 32nd place.

1:11pm... Jen from Poker Wire, BJ and myself just played poker in Bobby's Room I won the first ever North American Doyle Brunson Media Classic when my 6-6 held up against BJ's Q-10 and Jen's Q-9s.

1:14pm... Joe Clapper was just busted by Minh Ly. Man, these bust outs are coming so fast, I can hardly keep up!

1:34pm... Mark Cole was eliminated in 30th place by Young Phan. Cole won $20,690. Davood "The Little" Mehrmand busted out in 29th place by Tony Grand. Mehrmand won $20,690.

1:44pm... Mike Gracz was knocked out in 28th palce. He won $20,690.

1:48pm... Here are some pictures that I took just now:


Ernie Scherer began today as the chip leader


The media in Bobby's Room


Young Phan


Minh Ly


Barry Greenstien


Gavin Smith


Dan Harrington takes a cat nap
2:01pm... Players are on a break. 27 remain. We're down to 3 tables. Both Gus Hansen and Barry Grennstien wandered over to Bobby's Room. When play resumes, we will be on Level 14. The blinds are $4K/$8K with $1K antes. Jesus is now the chipleader with $740K. Action Dan Harrington is a close second with $660K. The average stack is $311K.

2:20PM... Kathy Liebert's J-J knocked out Scott "I'm gonna have to ask you to come in on Saturday" Lundberg's 10-10 in 27th place. He won $27,590.

2:35pm... Three more eliminations. Khanh Hua was knocked out by Gavin Smith in 26th place and Jeff Brock was busted by Don Zerwin in 25th place. Sam Rashid was eliminated in 24th place by Don Barton. All three players won $27,590. 23 remain and 17 more have to get knocked out before I get to go home and sleep!

3:31pm... Here's who got busted in the past hour:

23 Neal Mathews $20,690
22 Tom Lock $20,690
21 Gus Hansen $20,690
20 Darrel Dicken $27,590

Gus Hansen was busted when he moved all in on the button with 9-3o. Gavin Smith called with Big Slick from the blinds and busted the Great Dane.

3:36pm... Bouncin Round the Room: I got kicked out of Bobby's Room for an hour while the WPT crew filmed some interviews. I went to the Snack Bar and bought an ice tea as I ogled at a couple of college girls with back tattoos in front of me. I made several phone calls and checked the spreads in this weekend's NFL games at the sports book.

3:45pm.... Players are currently on a break. 19 are left on 3 tables. The average stack is $442K. Here's the Top 5 in chips:

1 Ernie Scherer $1.1M
2 Chris "Jesus" Ferguson $850K
3 Jan Sorensen $560K
4 Minh Ly $560K
5 Dan Harrington $550K

3:47pm... I saw Young Phan find A-A twice inside of three minutes. He beat A-J in the first hand and got them cracked the second time by Thom Werthmann's set of tens.

3:55pm... We're on a new level. Blinds are $5K/$10K with $1K antes.

4:04pm... Jesus is giving handouts to the masses. He doubled up Barry Greenstien and Bob Feduniak. Feduniak rivered a set against Jesus.

4:13pm... Don Barton was just busted in 19th place. He won $27,590. Players redraw for seats for the final two tables. Ernie Sherer is still the chipleader with $1.1 million.

4:20pm... Thom Werthmann was just busted in 18th palce by Ernie Sherer. Wethmann had K-K and Sherer had A-A. Werthmann won $27,590.

4:30pm... Young Phan took 17th place after he was knocked out by Tony Grand.

4:36pm... The media is getting kicked out of Bobby's Room because Doyle Brunson is here ready to play in the Big Game with Jen Harman and David Grey. The floor manager brought in a few racks of $1K chips. I dunno when my next update will be. Stay tuned. There are 16 players left and 10 more until I get to go home.

4:43pm... I have set up temporary refuge in the Snack Bar in between Light and the Sports Book. Now I have sun-burnt tourists wearing socks with tevas gawking over my shoulder while they wait for their $9 hamburgers.

4:44pm... Massoud Nikjouian was just knocked out in 16th place by Abraham Gray. Nikjouian won $27,590. Kathy Liebert's K-K were cracked by Joe Sander's A-J. Her stack took a hoit.

4:55pm... Steve Brecher was just busted in 15th place by Action Dan Harrington's K-K. Brecher won $34,485. Ernie Scherer is still the chipleader with $1.6 million.

5:07pm... The food smells great in the snack bar. I think the chili is calling my name! Oh in poker news, Tony Grand busted Joe Sanders in 14th place. Sanders won $34,485.

5:17pm... Barry Greenstien rivered a straight flush against Jesus. Both players checked all the way to the river after the both bet $60K preflop. Barry checked to Jesus on the river hoping to trap him. Jesus had a baby flush and did not bet it.

5:30pm... Players are on a break. 13 remain and the avergae stack is $646K. Here's latest chipcount courtesy of Poker Wire:

1 Ernie Scherer $1.65M
2 Tony Grand $1.6M
3 Dan Harrington $800K
4 Barry Greenstein $715K
5 Jan Sorensen $680K
6 Danny Shiff $580K
7 Chris "Jesus" Ferguson $530K
8 Minh Ly $480K
9 Gavin Smith $400K
10 Abraham "Avi" Gray $390K
11 Don Zewin $240K
12 Kathy Liebert $200K
13 Bob Feduniak $150K

5:40pm... We're on a new level. Blinds are $6K/$12K with a $2K ante.

5:46pm... The shortest stack remaining, Bob Feduniak, doubled up against Dan Harrington.

6:20pm... Action has halted. I've been eating onion rings and chili and doing my fantasy football picks. No one has been knocked out in over an hour.

6:35pm... Bob Feduniak doubled up again. This time with J-J against Barry Greenstein's K-10. Ernie Scherer is still the chipleader with $1.55M.

7:36pm... After a short break to recharge my battery, I am back. We have reached Level 17. The blinds are $8K/$16K with $2K antes. Kathy Liebert doubled up against Jan Sorenson when her A-A held up, while Ernie Scherer doubled up Gavin Smith. Here's an updated chip count courtesy of the lovely ladies at Poker Wire:

1 Tony Grand $1.58M
2 Dan Harrington $980K
3 Barry Greenstein $690K
4 Danny Shiff $640K
5 Jan Sorensen $622K
6 Don Zewin $620K
7 Minh Ly $575K
8 Abraham "Avi" Gray $550K
9 Gavin Smith $550K
10 Jesus $308K
11 Kathy Liebert $240K
12 Bob Feduniak $190K
13 Ernie Scherer $140K

8:04pm... Kathy Liebert had 5-5 and ran into Ernire Scherer's K-K. Liebert finished in 13th place and won $34,485 for first place. It had been almost 2 hours since someone was knocked out.

8:20pm... On an unfortunate hand. Bob Feduniak was elimianted in 12th place when his Q-7s lost to Danny Shiff's steal with 9-4o. Fednuiak won $34,485.

8:45pm... Jesus has left the building. Minh Ly eliminated Chris "Jesus" Ferguson in 11th place. Minh Ly had the Hilton Sisters and Jesus had 4-4. Ernie Scherer is the chipleader again with $2.16M after he won a monster pot off of Tony Grand when he picked off Grand on a bluff. Dan Harrington is second in chips with $1M.

8:50pm... Players are on a dinner break. Play will resume at 10pm.

10:34pm... Play has resumed. Avi Gray doubled up twice, once against Barry Greenstien and the other against Ernie Scherer when he cracked Scherer's K-K with a set of 8s. Scherer still has over $2M in chips and Dan Harrington is second with under $1M.

11:07pm... Barry Greenstien was knocked out in 10th place by Gavin Smith who flopped a set of 2s. Greenstien won $41,380.

11:22pm... We're down to 8 players after Abraham "Avi" Gray was eliminated in 9th Place. His 10-10 was outflopped by Ernie Scherer's A-K. Gray won $48,280 for 9th. Two more players to go! Ernie Scherer has $2.76M in chips and is still the chipleader. Gavin Smith has $1.4M.

12:30am... Dan Harrington knocked out Danny Shiff in 8th place. He won $55,175. We've reached the bubble!!! Here's a quick chip count courtesy of Poker Wire:

1 Ernie Scherer $2M
2 Gavin Smith $1.45M
3 Dan Harrington $1.4M
4 Don Zewin $860K
5 Tony Grand $720K
6 Jan Sorensen $630K
7 Minh Ly $450K

As play reaches it's 12th hour at the Bellagio, I have to wonder if there is anyone still actually at home/work following this?

1:13am... Minh Ly was the shortstack and doubled up with Q-10 against Ernie Scherer's 5-5. However, very soon after, Minh Ly lost most of those chips when his Hilton Sisters could not hold up against Tony Grand's A-8o. Grand flopped an ace and doubled up. Don Zerwin is the shortstack and Minh Ly is not far behidn with $500K in chips. Ernie Scherer remained the chip leader with $1.94M to Gavin Smith's $1.85M.

1:25am... Denamrk's Jan Sorenson was crippled when his A-K lost to Don Zerwin's K-K. Sorenson is the shortstack with $300K. On the brink of elimination, Sorenson caught a miracle card on the river to survive his all-in against Ernie Scherer.

1:45am... Players are returning from a break. The level has increased. Blinds are $15K/$30K with $4K antes. Action Dan Harrington moved into the chiplead while Minh Ly became the shortstack.

2:05am... Minh Ly doubled up against Gavin Smith when his A-A held up.


World Poker Tour hostess Courtney Friel during a photo shoot yesterday
2:31am... Dan Harrington loves the Hilton Sisters. He doubled up with Q-Q versus Tony Grand's 10-10. Tony Grand slipped to the short stack with $200K while Harrington is the chipleader with $2.5M. A few minutes later, Harrington found Q-Q again and won a pot against Ernie Scherer to add to his big stack.

3:05am... Minh Ly eliminated Erne Scherer in 7th place. Scherer entered teh day as teh chip leader and won $68,970. Both players were all in on the flop of A-J-9 with two clubs. Minh Ly had a gutshot straight draw and a King-high flush draw, while Scherer flopped two pair. Minh Ly made his flush on the river, which sent Scherer home on the TV bubble.

Here's who made the final WPT TV table including seating assignments and chip counts, courtesy of Poker Wire:

Seat 1: Tony Grand 118K
Seat 2: Minh Ly 3.056M
Seat 3: Dan Harrington 2.937M
Seat 4: Don Zewin 552K
Seat 5: Gavin Smith 1.368M
Seat 6: Jan Sorensen 370K

See everyone tomorrow (later tonight) at 7pm Vegas time for the taping of the final table.
posted by Pauly at 10/20/2005 03:23:00 PM | Permalink |

 
WPT Doyle Brunson North America Classic - Day 2

Before I begin, I must apologize for spreading horrible rumors! I inncorrectly blogged that Richard Brodie was eliminated last night. He made it to Day 2 and I'm gonna be rooting him on a lot today. Thanks to the Quiet Lion who left a nice comment on my blog telling me that he's still alive.

Last night after I completed my work for the day, I played at the Bellagio. I sat down for two hours at a $8/$16 table that included one guy in a wheelchair who could not see the flop because he had horrible eye sight. The dealer had to read out the cards to him every time. Aother guy was so drunk that he spilled drinks on the felt not once, not twice, but thrice! Then there was the hot chick who was nipping out the entire time. That's enough to get anyone on tilt. I sat next to the "cool guy toughster" who sported a barb wire tattoo and wore shades at the table. He looked like a total idiot but was actually a nice guy. Always get to know the person sitting to your left. Ask plenty of questions if you can. The better profile you can come up with, the better your chances of knowing if you have a fish, a maniac, or a rock sitting next to you.

I won $30, barely 2 big bets. I won my very first hand when I post with A-7 at the cutoff. I flopped two pair. I walked away after my A-A miraculously held up in early position. The flop had a Queen and I got two callers. The turn was a Queen and put a flush draw out there. One guy bet out. I put him on trip Queens but prayed he was jamming his flush draw. I raised, another guy folded, and the original bettor re-raised me. I considered mucking and called. The river was a blank and he bet out. I glanced at the rock hard nipples of the red head sitting across from me while she sipped on a vodka tonic and said, "Fuck it!"

I tossed out three red Bellagio chips and a blue one. I flipped over my Aces and the guy showed A-6 of hearts and said, "Great call!" He only had Ace high had a busted flush draw. I played one more hand and then racked up my chips.

When I got home, I fired up Poker Stars and played in a $10 MTT. I took 160th out of 680+. Thanks to Joanne who sweated me. Grubby came home mid-way after a rough night at Sunset Station. He saw me bluff my chips away when I had a short stack and made a move to steal the blinds with 10-2o. I ran into A-A in the blinds. That always happens to me it seems.

Here's the end of Day 1 chip count courtesy of the awesome folks at Poker Wire:

1 Chau Giang $ 208,900
2 Joe Rutledge $ 178,425
3 Arthur Rhea $ 110,025
4 Mike Gracz $ 100,925
5 Abraham "Avi" Gray $ 99,150
6 Bob Rahimi $ 97,375
7 Lew Fleming $ 95,725
8 Kevin Hong $ 95,675
9 Howard Weston $ 93,575
10 Layne Flack $ 92,550
11 Harold Singer $ 89,125
12 Reza Payvar $ 88,800
13 Scott Lundberg $ 86,050
14 Jean-Robert Bellande $ 86,025
15 Larry Etherington $ 84,700
16 Mike Matusow $ 83,025
17 Anthony Reategui $ 80,475
18 David Oppenheim $ 80,150
19 Joe Clapper $ 76,975
20 Darrell Dicken $ 76,775
21 Sam Rashid $ 76,750
22 Chris 'Jesus' Ferguson $ 76,475
23 Massoud Nikjouian $ 75,650
24 Jan Sorensen $ 73,850
25 Craig Hartman $ 73,250
26 David Kim $ 72,400
27 Jim McCrink $ 71,600
28 Damon Ahmadi $ 69,550
29 Seth Entwisle $ 67,150
30 Matthew Zambanini $ 66,800
31 Tex Barch $ 65,425
32 Philip Gurian $ 63,500
33 Neal Matthews $ 63,475
34 Andy Miller $ 62,375
35 Johnny Chan $ 62,275
36 Amir Nasseri $ 61,875
37 Bill Edler $ 61,600
38 Eskimo Clark $ 60,000
39 Wayne Lewis $ 59,725
40 Jay Cullen $ 59,275
41 Jason Gray $ 58,750
42 David Rubin $ 58,625
43 Can Kim Hua $ 58,500
44 Vasilis Lazarou $ 57,725
45 Evelyn Ng $ 56,625
46 Young Phan $ 56,500
47 William Thorson $ 55,825
48 James 'Capo' Caporuscio $ 55,050
49 Shane Shleger $ 53,975
50 Stan Wasserkrug $ 52,125
51 Mark Cole $ 51,550
52 Tom Lock $ 51,450
53 Erick Lindgren $ 50,725
54 Mark Chapic $ 50,575
55 Rodeen Talebi $ 50,000
56 Chad Moore $ 49,375
57 Kelly Zoudo $ 49,350
58 Minh Nguyen $ 49,275
59 Joseph Sanders $ 49,100
60 Lyle Berman $ 48,725
61 Barry Greenstein $ 46,925
62 Robert Mizrachi $ 46,500
63 Marco Traniello $ 46,325
64 Adam Richardson $ 45,850
65 Sean McCabe $ 45,300
66 Jordan Morgan $ 45,075
67 Howard Golden $ 44,925
68 Refugio Quintero $ 44,775
69 William Kerkaert $ 44,525
70 Adam Slutsky $ 44,375
71 Brett Zimmerman $ 43,975
72 Stephen Vansickle $ 43,625
73 Ernie Scherer $ 43,050
74 Bob Feduniak $ 42,450
75 Daniel Holm $ 42,425
76 Al Stonum $ 42,000
77 Steve Rassi $ 40,500
78 Chuck Pacheco $ 40,300
79 Bob Stupak $ 40,250
80 Tom McCormick $ 40,200
81 Mike Epstein $ 39,850
82 Herbert Montalbano $ 39,825
83 Mel Weiner $ 38,975
84 Eric Weiner $ 38,975
85 Gavin Smith $ 38,575
86 Tony Grand $ 38,000
87 Eric Kesselman $ 37,750
88 Howard Lederer $ 37,400
89 Jerry Burgess Jr. $ 37,275
90 Dan Alspach $ 37,175
91 Ron Turner $ 36,850
92 Davood Mehrmand $ 36,275
93 Jeff Brock $ 35,800
94 Meng La $ 35,750
95 Michael 'The Grinder' Mizrachi $ 35,700
96 Franco Brunetti $ 35,500
97 Jesse Jones $ 35,325
98 Tom Werthmann $ 35,225
99 Alex Brenes $ 34,375
100 Ron Faltinsky $ 34,200
101 TJ Cloutier $ 34,150
102 Captain' Tom Franklin $ 34,075
103 Andy Bloch $ 33,575
104 Harry Demetriou $ 32,800
105 Randy Lorensen $ 32,525
106 Tim Anders $ 32,500
107 Daniel Negreanu $ 32,375
108 Anthony George $ 32,350
109 Gus Hansen $ 32,325
110 John Hanson $ 32,225
111 Khanh Hua $ 32,050
112 David 'Devilfish' Ulliott $ 31,825
113 Richard 'Quiet Lion' Brodie $ 31,675
114 Alvin Zeidenfeld $ 31,525
115 Daniel Shiff $ 31,500
116 Arturo Diaz $ 31,150
117 Max Pescatori $ 31,000
118 Joe Cassidy $ 30,975
119 Alan Smurfit $ 30,725
120 Don Barton $ 30,725
121 David 'The Dragon' Pham $ 30,300
122 Bob Plonowski $ 30,175
123 Mel Judah $ 29,950
124 Robert Ozman $ 29,650
125 Robert Anastasopoulos $ 29,350
126 Lee Salem $ 29,225
127 Jake Minter $ 28,975
128 Lee Watkinson $ 28,825
129 Bill Heupel $ 28,425
130 John Pires $ 28,325
131 Wayne Boich $ 28,300
132 Minh Ly $ 28,150
133 Arnold Spee $ 27,975
134 John Myung $ 27,875
135 Alan Goehring $ 27,750
136 Abraham Tannous $ 27,400
137 Chad Brown $ 27,125
138 Daniel Clarin $ 26,850
139 Ben Gilbert $ 26,750
140 David Lloyd $ 26,675
141 Lonnie Mason $ 26,575
142 Jason Lester $ 26,300
143 Kent Goulding $ 26,150
144 Shane Douglas $ 26,025
145 Kathy Liebert $ 25,525
146 Charles McClink $ 25,000
147 Mark Gregorich $ 24,975
148 Nicholas Candela $ 24,675
149 Kristy Gazes $ 24,375
150 Blair Rodman $ 23,700
151 Neil Channing $ 23,675
152 Vinny Landrum $ 23,100
153 Vadim Trincher $ 23,050
154 Kevin 'The Man' Chan $ 23,000
155 Gerald Rhoads $ 22,575
156 Don Zewin $ 21,925
157 Jim McManus $ 21,600
158 Walter Chambers $ 21,450
159 Chris Ball $ 20,475
160 Josh Arieh $ 20,400
161 Men 'The Master' Nguyen $ 20,350
162 Seymour Guiberson $ 20,125
163 Mark Muchnik $ 19,975
164 Victor Ramdin $ 19,675
165 Richard Tatalovich $ 19,500
166 Gary Friedlander $ 19,475
167 Matt Lefkowitz $ 19,375
168 Mohammad Fathipour $ 19,025
169 Jennifer Harman $ 18,925
170 David Williams $ 18,900
171 Darren Walther $ 18,850
172 Steve Brecher $ 18,200
173 Chad Layne $ 18,150
174 Mickey 'Mouse' Mills $ 18,100
175 Mario Quijano $ 18,025
176 Michael Tate $ 17,900
177 Anthony Salinas $ 17,825
178 Adam Smith $ 17,750
179 Ronald Adams $ 17,725
180 Steven Silva $ 17,675
181 Freddy Deeb $ 17,425
182 Jorge Arias $ 17,325
183 Tony Lucci $ 17,075
184 Bryan Kim $ 16,900
185 Lee Markholt $ 16,375
186 Chris McCormack $ 15,900
187 Alan Boston $ 15,675
188 Phil Immergluck $ 15,550
189 Eric Mizrachi $ 15,175
190 Matt Zoorob $ 15,000
191 Vincenzo Beatrice $ 14,475
192 "Minneapolis" Jim Meehan $ 14,075
193 David Rabbani $ 13,350
194 Philippe Rouas $ 12,950
195 Jeff Rine $ 12,900
196 Steve Rosen $ 12,850
197 Anatole Parthes $ 12,600
198 JW Young $ 12,300
199 Bob Wenzl $ 12,225
200 David Bertolucci $ 12,175
201 Surinder Sunar $ 12,000
202 Stan Jablonski $ 11,775
203 Dan Woodward $ 11,625
204 Dan Harrington $ 11,475
205 Doyle Brunson $ 10,775
206 Jens Sjogren $ 10,275
207 Damon Ramirez $ 10,000
208 Thomas Rau $ 9,900
209 Nam Le $ 9,800
210 Daniel Alaei $ 7,850
211 Harley Hall $ 7,800
212 Bill Seber $ 6,450
213 Peter Falting $ 3,125

Yes, Chau "I Love Poker!" Giang is the chip leader. Doyle Brunson is going to have to make some moves because he's one of the short stacks. Day 2 begins at Noon with 213 players trying to win the first place prize of $1 million. Here are some tables that are going to be fun to watch today:

Table 55: Kevin "The Man" Chan, Tex Barch, Daniel Negreanu, Gus Hansen, David Kim, and Rodeen Talebi
Table 56: Jean-Robert Bellande, "Captain" Tom Franklin, Lyle Berman, Marco Traniello, and Gavin Smith
Table 57: Eskimo Clark, "Minneapolis" Jim Meehan, Blair Rodman, and Kathy Liebert
Table 61: Chad Brown, Doyle Brunson, Minh Nguyen, and Dan Harrington

Stay tuned for more action. In the meantime, go check out Flipchip and Curits K's pictures: here and here.

***** Live Blogging Updates *****

4:20pm... Here are some pictures that I took today:


Welcome!


Nice shirt!


Eye on the clock


The Fontana Room


Johnny Fuckin' Chan
5:03pm... Sorry for the lack of updates. The air card I'm using is kinda slow inside the Fontana Room so I'm out on the patio and every 30 minutes the water show goes off! Johnny Chan just walked past me and now he's smoking a cigar.

5:15pm... Here's the skinny. Chau Giang is still the chipleader. There are 105 players remaining. Richard Brodie, Mike Matusow, Lyle Berman, David The Dragon Pham, Josh Arieh, Marco Traniello, Jen Harman, Howard Lederer, Tex Barch, Mel Judah, Max Pescatori, Jean-Robert Bellande, Minh Nguyen, Daniel Negreanu, David Williams, Devilfish, Erick Lindgren, Joe Cassidy, "Minneapolis" Jim Meehan, Evelyn Ng, Andy Bloch, Capt. Tom Franklin, and Doyle Brunson have all been eliminated. Max told me about his hand. He had a short stack and someone push all-in in front of him with a weak ace. Max had A-10 and moved all in. Eskimo Clark called with A-A!! Ouch.

5:23pm... Jen Harman, Doyle Brunson, and Daniel Negreanu are all in Bobby's Room playing in the Big Game.

5:40pm... Break is over. 104 players left. Average stack is about 80K. Chau Giang is the chipleader and Minh Ly is a close second. Right now we are on Level 9. Blinds are $800/$1600 with a $200 antes.

6:00pm... We reached the money bubble. 101 players remain.

6:14pm... We're in the money! Jesus saves the day by knocking out Kent Goulding in 101st place on the bubble. There was a possibilty that we'd be sitting here for hours during a hand-to-hand play.

6:20pm... Back by popular demand!

Last 5 Pros I Took a Piss Next To:
1. Minh Ly
2. Gavin Smith
3. Layne Flack
4. Gus Hansen
5. Lee Watkinson

7:45pm... I got comped the buffet, courtesy of the Bellagio. The sushi rocks.

7:54pm... 77 players remaining.Chau Giang is the chip leader with $295K. Steve Brecher has about $265K and Jesus has $225K. NYC's Shane Schleger was knocked out in 92nd place.

8:01pm... Bad Blood is in the house!! He's in town for a few days and he's hanging out with the media now in press row.

8:30pm... Kristy Gazes and Surinder Sunar have both been eliminated.

8:47pm... 68 players remaining. Players are going on a dinner break and will be back at 10pm. Then they will play 2 more levels before play is stopped around 1am. Since Bad Blood is in town, we will be heading to a strip club with Grubby. So I will be leaving my post here at the Fontana Room to get drunk and grope strippers. If you want updates, visit Poker Wire for chip counts or read BJ's updates at Card Player. I shall be back tomorrow. I will post a Day 2 update on Las Vegas and Poker Blog sometime later tonight, after I get that stripper's perfume off of my clothes.

4:20am... Back from Sin. Anyway, there are 39 players remaining. Here's the end of Day 2 chip count courtesy of Poker Wire:

1 Ernie Scherer $ 675,000
2 Gavin Smith $ 497,500
3 Tony Grand $ 457,000
4 Mike Gracz $ 402,500
5 Dan Harrington $ 375,000
6 Young Phan $ 362,500
7 Chris 'Jesus' Ferguson $ 359,000
8 Joe Clapper $ 323,000
9 Khanh Hua $ 287,000
10 Steve Brecher $ 276,500
11 Barry Greenstein $ 244,000
12 Thomas Lock $ 241,500
13 Jeff Brock $ 233,000
14 Darrell Dicken $ 230,000
15 Massoud Nikjouian $ 228,500
16 Jan Sorensen $ 223,000
17 Abraham 'Avi' Gray $ 223,000
18 Thom Werthmann $ 220,000
19 Don Barton $ 218,500
20 Toe Sanders $ 198,500
21 Minh Ly $ 195,000
22 Kathy Liebert $ 190,500
23 Sam Rashid $ 190,500
24 Davood Mehrmand $ 187,000
25 Arnold Spee $ 168,000
26 Bill Edler $ 154,500
27 Craig Hartman $ 144,000
28 Gus Hansen $ 143,500
29 Scott Lundberg $ 132,500
30 Neal Matthews $ 108,000
31 Don Zewin $ 92,000
32 Mark Cole $ 80,000
33 Bob Feduniak $ 78,000
34 Wayne Lewis $ 70,500
35 Jim McManus $ 57,000
36 Danny Shiff $ 55,000
37 Rodeen Talebi $ 55,000
38 Eskimo Clark $ 53,000
39 Matt Lefkowitz $ 42,000

Play resumes at Noon on Wednesday. See you then.
posted by Pauly at 10/19/2005 01:14:00 PM | Permalink |

 
WPT Doyle Brunson North America Classic - Day 1

I returned to the Bellagio for the first time since August. Man, I miss that place. There are very few casinos that can compare to the Bellagio. I saw the usual cast of characters covering the event... Larry from Bluff, BJ from Card Player, Heather, Jen & Lisa from Poker Wire, and even Foiled Coup made it to the Bellagio! I met up with the Poker Prof and Flipchip for lunch. Flipchip got comped by the Bellagio so we ate at Noodles, which is one of my favorite places to eat in Las Vegas. I love the Sesame Chicken there. I also bumped into a felow blogger Curtis K., who snapped some kick ass photos. The drive from Grubby's place to the Bellagio takes less than 20 minutes.

The main event for Festa al Lago IV started at noon today. It was Day 1 of the Doyle Brunson North American Classic and the biggest names in pker were all there. 420 players signed up and bought in for $10,000. Each player gets $20K in chips to start, which the pros all prefer. It's more ammo to play with. The top 100 win prize money. Here's the payout structure:

1 $1,060,000
2 $620,730
3 $327,610
4 $189,630
5 $137,940
6 $96,560
7 $68,970
8 $55,175
9 $48,280
10 $41,380
11-15 $34,485
16-20 $27,590
21-30 $20,690
31-40 $17,245
41-50 $13,795
51-100 $12,000

Yep, first place gets $1 million and a seat in the $25K buy-in WPT Championships. With 42 tables filled with some of the best names in poker, half of the field played in the poker room while the other half played in the Fontana Room, which overlooks the strip and the historic Bellagio fountain. Every 30 minutes the water show would go off. It was weird to see actual sunlight creep inside. Although it was raining all day, what little light crept through the windows. They actually had two tables going on in Bobby's Room of all places. That's were the lovely Carmel Petresco was playing.

***** Live Blogging Update *****

4:32pm... I took a very lazy and lax approach to covering the event today. I've learned the hard way that I need to pace myself during these events. So today, I lingered around and I watched. Foiled Coup introduced me to a hot blonde waitress who was from Brooklyn. She also used to live in Park Slope, a few blocks from where I used to live. While I wandered back and forth between the poker room and the Fontana Room, I heard a lot of bad beat stories and some gossip. One player who made the final table at this year's WSOP dropped over $2 million in "The Big Game" recently.

4:47pm... Here's who I spotted in the event: Doyle Brunson, Chip Reese, Phil Ivey, Lyle Berman, Jennifer Harman, Barry Greenstein, Howard Lederer, John Juanda, Daniel Negreanu, David "The Dragon" Pham, T.J. Cloutier, Carlos Mortensen, Humberto Brenes, Ron Rose, Chris Bigler, Andy Bloch, Mel Judah, Gus Hansen, Erik Seidel, Chau Giang, Minh Ly, Dan Harrington, Josh Arieh, Thor Hansen, Carmel Petresco, Kathy Liebert, Evelyn Ng, Liz Lieu, Men "The Master" Nguyen, "My Main Man" Freddy Deeb, Jesus Ferguson, David Grey, David Singer, Sammy Farha, Paul Phillips, Layne Flack, Billy Baxter, Erick Lindgren, Minneapolis Jim Meehan, Mike Matusow, Chip Jett, Dan Heimiller, Young Phan, Paul Wolfe, Rafael Perry, Mark Seif, John Phan, Maureen Feduniak, Dewey Tomko, Kristy Gazes, Jim McManus, Scott Fischman, Joe Sebok, John Myung, Mimi Tran, John D'Agostino, Senthil Kumar, Harry Demetriou, The Grinder, David Levi, Paul Magriel, Tex Barch, Lee Watkinson, Todo Leonidas, JC Tran, "The Mighty" Quinn Do, Barny Boatman, Harley Hall, Jean Robert Bellande, Tuan Le, Richard Brodie, Gavin Smith, Ted Forrest, Kenna James, Jan Sorenson, Surinder Sunar, Capt, Tom Franklin, and Mike Gracz. Phil Hellmuth played too and he arrived late as usual.

5:01pm... BJ told me about one powerhouse table that ncluded Gus Hansen, Andy Bloch, Dan Harrington, Allen Cunningham, Chris Bigler, and Carlos Mortensen. Ouch. I'd hate to be the poor shmuck who won a satellite and got seated at that table!

6:15pm... Chip Jett was one of the first players busted out early. So was Paul Magriel, Phil Ivey, Scott Fischman, and Tim Pham.

6:30pm... I updated my earlier post about the "Bathroom Fucking Incident."

7:22pm... According to Poker Wire, Chau Giang was the chipleader with about $127K. Players will complete their current level and play will end for the day.

7:24pm... Some late eliminations included: Mark Seif, John Phan, Barry Shulman, "Neverwin" Woolf, John D'Agostino, David Levi, Eli Elezra, Erik Seidel, Humberto Brenes, Joe Sebok, and Ron Rose.

7:47pm... Chau Giang busted Paul Phillips when Giang flopped a Broadway straight with Q-J against Philipp's A-J and top pair.

7:58pm... Al Cant Hang called me for a Dial-a-Shot. Congrats to BigMike who won the Boathouse tourney tonight!!

8:01pm... Chris Bigler, Thor Hasnen, and David Grey were all eliminated. 230 players remain.

8:11pm... Just found out that I won something cool from Poker Stars. Well according to the Blogger Championship blog, my blog was selected to win a Lou Krieger book. Thanks Poker Stars.

8:22pm... John Juanda and Dan Heimiller were both eliminated.

8:55pm... Day 1 is over. There are 214 or 215 players left. Recent elimiantions include Richard Brodie, Farzad Bonyadi, Dewey Tomko, Allen Cunningham, Paul Wolfe, and Senthil Kumar. At the last check, Chau Giang is the chipleader, although this is unconfirmed. Play will resume at Noon on Wednesday.
posted by Pauly at 10/18/2005 04:20:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Bathroom Fucking

At 2:17am, while I was taking a shit at Mandalay Bay in the bathroom near the sports book, a couple walked into the stall next to me and started fucking. The bathroom floor was black marble and offered a perfect reflection. So I watched. She wore sandals and her toe nails were painted pink. She moaned and groaned and a few guys at the urinals made jokes. The boyfriend insisted that his girlfriend was just throwing up, especially when a security guard knocked on the stall door a few minutes later.

Just another late Monday night in Las Vegas.

My flight was delayed. It was raining pretty hard upon my arrival. My rental car has California plates and the drive to Grubby's apartment took less than 15 minutes. We grabbed dinner at Green Valley Ranch at a place called Balboa's. It's a 24 hour pizza joint. I got the chips with chili con queso and a pizza with spicy sausage. Our waitress was kinda cute. Here's an actual conversation that went down.

Pauly: Dude, what do you think about our waitress?
Grubby: I don't think she's good looking.
Pauly: I'd still fuck her.
Grubby: Well of course, so would I.

Later on Grubby said our waitress was married. He saw her ring. If I knew that, I wouldn't have given her such a good tip. I wanted to go play poker, so we met up with Bobby Bracelet at Mandalay Bay. We drank at the bar near the sports book and hung out for several hours.

That's it for now. I have to get up in a few hours to head over to the Bellagio for the start of the WPT event.

***** Update *****

6:01pm... I've been getting swarmed with responses over the bathroom incident. One dude walked up to me at the Bellagio and asked me a slew of questions about what went down last night. Here is one email in particular that sums up what a lot of you have been wondering!

Dear Sir:

With regards to your posting on 10/18/05 ("Bathroom Fucking"), I would like some additional details about this event. In speaking about this event with other readers of your blog, I/we have a few queries that I/we was/were hoping you could kindly answer:

1) How much time transpired when you were moving your bowels?
2) Did the party in the stall next to you ("The Couple") climax?
3) Do you know if they were "Clenching" (was he sitting on the toilet with an erect penis while she rode him either facing the wall or facing the stall door)? My friends and I assume that they were having reverse intercourse (commonly referred to as "doggystyle") but we would like a confirmation about this.
4) What sort of jokes were the gentlemen at the urinals making?
5) You mention that the floors gave a sort of reflection. Were you able to see breasts or other intimate body parts?

The answering of these questions would put our collective minds at rest. Please keep up the good work and I look forward to hearing back from you in a timely fashion.

-Warmest Regards,
Brendan

Here's my weak attempt to answer all your questions, Brendan.

1. I was in the bathroom for about 7-10 minutes.

2. I'm prety sure no one came. Not even me. Although I think I popped a half-a-wood during all of this.

3. They were both facing the wall with the toilet. I guess you can say they were standing up and doing it doggie style.

4. One guy joked, "I'm sure she has an empty hole!" Another guy said, "Shotgun anus!" And yet another said, "I hope that's not two guys."

5. I got to see some ass, both the guy and the girl. She wore a jean skirt. She left first and the guy left a few moments afterwards. I managed to leave in between the both of them, so I saw her satnding outside the bathroom. She was shitfaced and kinda looked like Princess Fergie.

I hope that clarifies the situation for all of you.
posted by Pauly at 10/18/2005 06:11:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Back to Las Vegas

"It's a world. And I'm just living in it." - Harvey Pekar

In a few hours, I'll be boarding a JetBlue flight at JFK to head back to Las Vegas for 16 sun-filled days. I'll be at the Bellagio tomorrow covering the big Festa al Lago poker tournament with Flip Chip. The main event is a WPT event called The Doyle Brunson North American Classic. Check back here later this week for live updates and some of Flip Chip's pictures. Of course, you can always check Las Vegas and Poker Blog later this week to read my daily recaps or you can stop by today to see who has been winning the other Festa al Lago events. I enjoyed working at the Bellagio last July for the Bellagio Challenge Cup and cannot wait to return. I wonder if the Bellagio hookers missed me?

Speaking of hookers... in case you are wondering, I will not be returning to the Redneck Riviera. Instead I'll be crashing with Grubby for a few days in Henderson/Green Valley. I'm sure we'll get into some hijinks. Bobby Junk-let, Bad Blood, and Jaxia are all supposed to be in Las Vegas at sometime this week too.

The plan for me is to cover the WPT event at the Bellagio all of this week ending up the the final table on Friday. Next Sunday, I rented a hotel room on the Strip so I can play in the Poker Stars Blogger Championship in a decent environment. I recently found out that I'm the leading referral for the Blogger Championship. How the hell did that happen?

Early next week, I'll be working on a new project that will take me all over the city of Las Vegas. I hope to get some great writing material. All of this goes down before Vegoose begins! My buddy Joker is flying in from Colorado for five days and we're gonna raise hell at the end of the month and see a ton of great music. I'm really looking forward to seeing Widespread Panic at Thomas & Mack on Halloween. Oh, and I obtained almost all the elements to my kick ass Halloween costume. We're gonna try to pick up hippie chicks by persuading them to party in our swanky suite. We'll get them jacked up on Malibu rum and canberry juice, while we get the all wet strumming Dave Matthews tunes on the guitar.

I'll also be playing as much poker as I can, flinging around chips with soused tourists and drpping "The Hammer" on local grinders. Before I left Las Vegas in August, I developed a healthy attachment to the Mandalay Bay poker room. Hitting one of their bonus hand jackpots will do that to you. Also on my list is a session in the $10/20 game at the Mirage and the juicy $8/16 game at the Bellagio. I also want to try to play a tournament at Sam's Town or at the Imperial Palace.

My Last Weekend in the City

Over this weekend, I was super busy with my buddy's wedding on a roof top deck here in NYC. It had been raining for like two weeks straight and the weather finally cleared up just in time. I had a wonderful evening even though I had to miss the Notre Dame-USC game. Thanks to BG who kept me on top of the scores. The food was great (dates with melted goat cheese = yummy) and I put a small dent in my liver thanks to a bottle of SoCo in honor of AlCantHang. Plus I got to see some old friends that I've lost touch with over the past few years. I answered a lot of questions about what it's like living in Las Vegas or about my recent travels in Amsterdam and Spain. My friends also reminded me that they think the value of their Pauly Paintings (which they have hanging in their apartments and houses all over the world) have gone up due to my brief 15 seconds of fame thanks to ESPN's WSOP coverage.

There are times in your life when you think you are going to be tight with your current goup of friends forever... however, reality sets in. You discover that you relish those rare moments to catch up with old friends while standing in the buffet line, smiling at pictures of their kids or asking them to email you naked pictures of "the chick in the accounting department with the nice rack."

I've been trying to maximize a great "writing rush" that I had this past ten days or so. Writing is a lot like poker. Some days you can do everything right and nothing clicks. Some days you're on fire. I've been in the zone the last two weeks and I'd really like to ride out this streak before I travel again, but there's nothing I can do.

Thanks to Daddy for a belated birthday present. He hooked me up with a Keller Williams show from last year's All Good fesitval and Lotus from Late Nite at Wakarusa. He also included two kick ass Phish shows from their 1998 Island Tour... 4.3.98 and 4.5.98. I managed to listen to all the shows a lot while I played on Party Poker before the jackpot hit. On Sunday, I played on Poker Stars to help clear my reload bonus. I took 208th out of 1970 in a huge MTT. I doubled up early twice with the Hilton Sisters. Then, I lost the majority of my stack on a bad beat late in the tourney. Go figure.

I'm glad that Titan Poker gets a bad rap. Why? Because it leaves more fish for me to feast on. I've been brutalized by bad beats in their MTTs recently, but those SNGs are so damn soft and the ring game tables are full with donkeyfish. I've been padding my bankroll with winning sessions against awful players with deep pockets and with Titan's generous first time despoist bonus. The poor quality of the players on Titan Poker more than makes up for Titan's shortcomings. The feeding frenzy continues for me as the sharks avoid the waters on Titan Poker. The money that I cashed out on Titan Poker looks, smells, and feels the same as the money I cashed out on Poker Stars and Party Poker.

That's it for now. My next post will be from Las Vegas.

By the way, thanks to Flip Chip for this delicious picture of the day!

Update

12:43pm... My flight was delayed 1.5 hours due to bad weather in Las Vegas and now leaves at 3pm. I will be getting into Las Vegas late. At least Jet Blue's terminal at JFK has wi/fi.

12:45pm... I logged into Party Poker to kill some time.

12:55pm... There's a Larry Kang from Bluff Magazine sighting at the airport! He's on my same flight to Las Vegas.

1:15pm... I did a quick hit and run and won 1/3 of my buy in on one hand when I flopped trips and cracked aces!

1:31pm... Still dleayed. My foot fell asleep. I saw a hot chick who looked a lot like Jessica Alba. I hope she's on my flight. The chances that she's sitting next to me are 3%. The chances that she reads the Tao of Poker are 1 in 8 million.
posted by Pauly at 10/17/2005 07:06:00 AM | Permalink |

 
The Best of...

Here are the best posts from the Tao of Poker over the past few years. Enjoy!

2004
Grublog Classic Prep
Haleywood Homegame
Reflecting on a Bad Streak
Sad Amy
Sink or Swim
Watching Pauly
WSoP Shootout
TroubleHand 1: KJo
Rules to Live By
$5 & Tony Randall
TroubleHand 2: AQo
Junkie
11 Questions
Borgata Bloggers
Mentor Material
WPBT 2004 Holiday Classic
The Brawl
Closing Thoughts: Bloggers in Vegas

2005
Blogging Tips
February Doldrums
The Day Before Vegas
Poker & Masturbation
Empiricism, Kierkegaard, Catholic High School Girls, and Poker
Tao of Risk
Poker Nicknames Origins
Circles & Poker
Bloggers in Wonderland

2006
Turn This Mother Out
Gilligan's Island and Poker
Market Corrections
Bukowski & Poker
Strippers & Blow
April Sojourn
WPT Championship
Glass Eye, Red Rocks, and Omaha Suckouts
The Warrior Within: Bruce Lee, Taoism, and Poker
Through the Looking Glass: April Maelstrom
Mother Lovebone
LaFeltah Vermouth and the Village Drunk
Wall St. Game
Tao of Keno
Born to Gamble Part I: Where It All Begins
Born to Gamble Part II: Southbound
Born to Gamble Part III: Midnight Rider
Born to Gamble Part IV: Ramblin' Man
Born to Gamble Part V: Whipping Post
Born to Gamble Part VI: Revival
First Day at the WSOP: Buffets and Hookers 1, WSOP 0
2006 WSOP July
2006 WSOP August
Exile on Main St.

Of course, if you are looking for 2005 WSOP coverage, visit the June 2005 and July 2005 archives. If you are looking for 2006 WSOP coverage, visit the July 2006 and August 2006 archives.
posted by Pauly at 10/16/2005 02:53:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Happy Birthday, Derek!

Today is my brother's birthday! Stop by Derek's blog and send him birthday wishes.

Yesterday, Derek started his celebration early by making the final table of the first ever Wil Wheaton.net inaugural tourney on Poker Stars. Thanks to Wil for setting it up. Congrats to Joanne for winning it. And congrats to Maudie, April, and Columbo for making the final table. Poor Jaxia bubbled out.



posted by Pauly at 10/15/2005 07:29:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Reloads, Jackpots, and Wil Wheatons


I played exclusively on Party Poker yesterday per the advice of Iggy. The Party Poker bad beat jackpot was over a half a million dollars for fuck's sake! I happened to be at the same table as Jorgen for a little bit yesterday afternoon. I spent all night on the tables. As of 8:45am, the jackpot was over $557K. Yikes! I happened to also talk to Iggy yesterday for a little while. We both joked how it's a coincidence that the jackpot is reaching half a million a few days after Party Poker lets loose their skins. I wonder if it will hit sometime this weekend?

By the way, Poker Stars has a rare reload bonus going on... 25% up to $150 max which expires on Sunday, October 16th. You have to deposit $600 to get $150. You have to earn 5 FPP's for each $1 in bonus money. Bonuses on Poker Stars never expire. I just reloaded to play in a slew of Poker Stars Caribbean Adventure satellites.

Don't forget that Wil Wheaton is hosting a private tournament on Poker Stars today. Details are below. Can't wait to drop the Hammer on Mr. Wheaton. I think that Derek will also be playing.

That's it for now. I have a ton of work to do in the next 24 hours. My friends Gil & Elite are getting married on Saturday and we all hope it finally stops raining after a week of non-stop rain in the big city, just in time for their nuptials. They also posted an odd photo of me on their wedding site. Also, I return to Las Vegas on Sunday so the next few days are going to be crazy. See you at the tables.

Recent Poker Playing Music...
1. The Velvet Underground
2. Radiohead
3. Jerry Garcia Band
4. Django Reinhardt
5. Galactic with Karl Denson

******

By the way, stop by Iggy's blog and read his excellent trip report from Europe!

*******

Update: Wil's Where's my Buritto? Invitational

4:01pm... 96 players. Top 9 get paid. First place pays $288. I got Tokyo James and Obie VIP at my table. Derek had Heather and Drizz at his table. April (West Coast), Jaxia, Joanne, and Wil are all at the same table.

4:05pm... Derek flopped a "joint" with A-J. Heather flopped second pair and a straight flush draw in a three way pot on a board of K-Q-10. The other guy moved all in with J-9. Derek's "joint" held up and he tripled up.

4:28pm... Both Bugsy and Maudie joined my table. I had T1300 and folded every hand. Obie ran over the table.

4:38pm... I got crippled when I moved all in with the Hammer against Surgu. He ended up calling with Q-Q and I picked up a gutshot draw which never materialized. Hiltons kicked me in the junk. Ouch.

4:39pm... Wil suggests I get called for a Dial-a-Tilt. Joanne ended up calling.

4:40pm... With Joanne on the phone I found K-K at the cutoff and just T500. I limped and got three callers. I moved all in on the flop and Obie doubled me up.

4:42pm... I was knocked out when I tried to resteal from the LB with A2 to a button raise. The button called my all in with 8-8 and I lost to a higher flush. I wa sbusted in 65th by DietDrThunder.

5:10pm... Drizz was busted.

5:15pm... Wil was knocked out when he moved all in with the Hammer and got busted by A-K.

5:20pm... Joanne and April get moved to Maudie and Obie's table. April went from the short stack to over 4K in chips.

5:23pm... Derek won a 6K pot with Ace high.

5:35pm... I started playing a cash game with Alan and Wil. I almost tilted Alan when I won a big pot with the Jack Hammer!!!

5:38pm... Derek won another pot with A-J. He moved up to 2nd in chips.

5:45pm... Derek moved up to 15K in chips when he won a huge pit with K-10 vs K-J and 10-10. He caught a runner-runner full house and busted 2 guys.

5:49pm... 7 bloggers are in the Top 10... Maudie, Joanne, April, Jaxia, Derek, Bugsy, and Colombo.

5:55pm... Derek took over the chip lead with 28K when his A-A won another big pot against 10-10.

5:57pm... On my cash game table, Wil's Hiltons were cracked by A-K. Ouch.

6:17pm... I had to take a break and upload new tunes onto my iPod so I folded for like 10-15 minutes straight. Derek is still the chipleader with 17 players left.

6:24pm... I took Wil's last $5! Sorry Wil. He had A-Ks and I had Hiltons. He flopped an Ace but I flopped a set. Rebuy!

6:35pm... I doubled up Papergrrl in my cash game. She flopped two pair against me.

6:38pm... The Where's My Burrito tournament reached a final table when Jaxia bubbled out! Here's the final table players:



6:45pm... Just found out that I'm a Top 10 Referral to the Online BLogger Championship.

7:00pm... Down to 8 at the final table. Derek has 14K and is in 4th. Joanne's the new chipleader.

7:10pm... Derek got crippled when his 66 lost to A4s via the river. He got half his stack back on the next hand when AQ beat KT... on the river.

7:12pm... Derek was just busted in 8th by Joanne. Great game!

7:13pm... I flopped top pair and a nut flush draw with AQs. I picked up a decent pot catching a flush. Jaxia and Beck joined our cash game table.

7:20pm... I went for a piss break and Maudie (6th) and April (7th) were busted.

7:23pm... Joanne is heads up with whoispain with a slight advantage.

7:26pm... Congrats to Joanne who won the Where's My Burrito Invitational! She won when she flopped top pair with K3s against the Hilton Sisters. Good job!
posted by Pauly at 10/14/2005 08:43:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Where My Burrito? Wil Wheaton's Private Poker Stars Tournament

Guess what? Wil Wheaton is hosting a private tournament on Poker Stars on Friday!!! Here's the skinny:

What: WWdN Where's My Burrito? Invitational
Where: PokerStars
When: Friday, October 14th @ 4:00 PM EST
Password: monkey
Tournament number: 13722477 (Look under Private Tournament Tab)
Buy-in: $10+1

According to Wil, this is open to WWdN readers, Card Squad readers, and anyone else who know's the password is monkey. So if you wanna play against Wil Wheaton and some of your favorite bloggers then sign up today. It's only $10! If you don't have a Poker Stars account, simply download their software here.

Should be fun. I'm already signed up! See you at the tables.
posted by Pauly at 10/13/2005 04:20:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Poker Stars NYC VIP Party

Before we begin, you can read Otis' recap of the Poker Stars event at Poker Stars Blog. There are a few pics of me posted there.

Last night, I was fortunate to get an invite to a swanky party that Poker Stars threw at the W Hotel in Times Square. It pays to know people like Otis and Nolan Dalla who both work for Poker Stars. Of course they were both there and it was awesome to catch up with them along with plenty of familiar faces I met in Las Vegas during the 2005 WSOP.

Poker Stars was pimping their WPT event shceduled for January 4-11, 2006 in the Bahamas. They got me all liquored up in hopes I would write about the event. So here we go.

I showed up at thirty minutes late to the party and when I checked in, they had "poker blogger" down as my affiliation on the name tag. I reluctantly put it on and headed for the free bar. Inherently, media cocktail parties and press conferences are boring affairs. The best ones have an open bar. I opted for a Heineken although the bartenders were mixing various beach-style drinks in honor of the Poker Stars Caribbean Adventure. I found Otis right away and we chatted while the waiters brought over trays of random food items like shrimp, crab cakes, nachos with kick ass guacamole, Beef Wellington, and some other fancy thing which I kept eating but no one seemed to know what exactly it was. If you ask me, the moose was excellent.

I saw Greg "Fossilman" Raymer, Isabelle Mercier, and Joe Hachem and all of them were busy talking to different media types. ESPN was there. Along with Vanity Fair, Stuff, Bluff, the NY Daily News, and several other media outlets. I saw Peter Alston, who co-wrote One of a Kind with Nolan Dalla. Wendeen Eolis from Poker Player Newspaper and Larry Kang and his brother Will from Bluff. Otis introduced me to one of Poker Stars' photographers named Jodi. She said that I looked familiar. I've been getting that a lot recently and inside my head I heard Phil Hartman's voice from his infamous Simpson's character Troy McClure say, "Hi, I'm Dr. Pauly. You might remember me from several WSOP episodes."

It turns out that Jodi and I used to play at the same underground club here in NYC about a year and a half ago. Good memory. Speaking of underground card rooms, Otis pointed out one women in particular at the party who was the real life person that the character Petra from Rounders was based after. Pretty cool, huh?

I spoke with Lee Jones for a bit about the future of poker. He described it as a big wave and said when it eventually reaches the beach he's gonna look back and say, "What a ride!"

The press conference was delayed because Chris Moneymaker's flight was delayed. He eventually showed up, but by then, I had half a bag on. After two beers, and four Absolut cocktails, I was pretty much toast. With enough liquid strength to drown several small Malaysian villages, I chatted up Isabelle Mercier. I got a double kiss which is the best thing that's happened to me in the last five years. Otis was slick and snagged a photo and she told me about her recent trip to South Africa.

Nolan Dalla started the press conference with Moneymaker en route from the airport. Nolan introduced Lee Jones who's the poker room manager at Poker Stars. He spoke about a lot of different things including the fact that they keep records of every single hand that's played on their site. He also said that Poker Stars reviews every hand to insure that there's no colluding going down. From my understanding, Poker Stars is the only site that freezes colluder's accounts, but they also refund the money to the players that were cheated. That's just another reason why Poker Stars has probably the best support staff in the online poker industry.

Lee Jones introduced the stars who were there... Joe Hachem, Greg Raymer, and Isabelle Mercier. They all spoke briefly and Isabelle was a little nervous. Then the Q&A started. It went a little slow, so Nolan Dalla whispered to me, "Ask a question. You're a smart guy. Come up with something."

Great. I love being on the spot. Any chance I can make a jackass out of myself, I'll do my best. Good thing I was drinking. With my cocktail in one hand (by the way, the bartender was mixing stiff vodka drinks in pint glasses which is almost a double drink) and the microphone in the other, I asked my standard A-K question. The same one I asked Tom McEvoy at the WPBT Holiday Classic last December... "It seems that I get knocked out of tournaments with A-K more than any other hand. Am I overplaying A-K or is it just an overrated hand?"

The crowd got a chuckle out of the question and Joe Hachem said it was better that I was playing A-K than getting busted with 2-7o! Too bad he didn't say, "The Hammer!" Greg Raymer added that it's a good hand and that's why people get knocked out of tournaments with A-K, KK, and AA.

Chris Moneymaker eventually showed up and he was pretty funny. He told everyone that he used to gamble a lot on pro sports and he hoped that the score in the baseball game would hit the over.

After the press conference ended, it was pretty obvious that Joe Hachem is a part of Team Poker Stars. It's not official according to my source at Poker Stars. Anyway, they had a few poker tables set up. They ran live turbo SNGs. Each table had a Poker Stars team member. Table 1 was Greg Raymer. Table 2 was Chris Moneymaker and Isabelle Mercier. Table 3 had Joe Hachem. I drew Seat 1, Table 1. Yep, I sat right across from Fossilman. Play was ten-handed. Everyone started out with 750 chips. If you won your table, you won a set of poker chips. If you busted a star, you got an autographed copy of One of a Kind.

I was very drunk by the time the tournament started. On the second hand I found The Hammer and raised to 100. The blinds were 25-25. One chick called and we were heads up. The flop had an ace and a seven. She bet out 25 and I raised to 125. She called. The turn was a blank. She bet 25 and I raised to 125. She called again! On the river she checked and I checked. She showed A-Q. Ouch. I mucked and lost half my stack on a Hammer bluff.

When were down to five players and Fossilman put on his shades as he raised my blinds in LP. I found A-J and moved all in for the rest of my chips. Fossilman's raise had me covered. He showed K-9 and I flipped over A-J. He turned a King and I was out. I got busted by a World Champion.

Here are some pictures from the Poker Stars event. You can click on the photos for an enlarged view...

Team Poker Stars: Joe Hachem, Greg Raymer, Chris Moneymaker, and Isabelle Mercier


3 WSOP Champions


Nolan Dalla introduces Lee Jones


Fossilman explains what blinds are to a media rep


Nice suit, Otis!


Me and Isabelle "No Mercy" Mercier

After I was busted by Raymer, I hung out with Otis and drank a fruity rum drink that they served in fake plastic coconuts. Eventually the event ended and we decided to do a little barhopping. That's where things get sketchy as I began a Tuesday night bender with Otis.

Otis has an excellent post on his regular blog called Tuesdays with Pauly. Here's a bit:

"Pauly takes notes. His life is a yet-unproduced or written off-Broadway play about drug-addled strippers and strung-out stockbrokers. At first glance someone might think his notepad is some affectation to make him look serious about his craft. It's not that. It's that too much happens in his presence to remember it fully. What's more, life around Pauly is awash in carefully controlled but occasionally wild abandon intoxication. Failure to properly document the activities risks losing them completely.

Pauly takes notes. He takes pictures. He takes video. And I've appeared in a few too many recently."

Part 2 of my post is continued over at the Tao of Pauly. To read about our drunken hijinks, check out: Barhopping with Otis.
posted by Pauly at 10/13/2005 12:02:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Post Pending: Poker Stars Party in NYC

Sorry for the delay. I've been wicked hungover all day and had some other work to do. I'll throw up a post very soon about last night's Poker Stars party including plenty of pictures. For now here are some teasers...

• Fossilman knocked me out of a media SNG... on a bad beat!
  
• Isabelle Mercier gave me a double kiss.
• Otis and I drank at 8 bars last night.

Stay tuned.
posted by Pauly at 10/12/2005 07:53:00 PM | Permalink |

 
WSOP Main Event on ESPN and the Sky Is Falling!

Yawn. I'm more concerned with a some yahoo carrying a small bomb in a backpack moments away from embracing 72 virgins and denotating the fucker on a downtown subway than I am about this most recent news about Party Poker cutting loose its skins. Too much skin is bad for you anyway.

Read posts from other bloggers to get the run down on Party Poker dumping it's skins.

A Day That Will Live in Infamy (Bill Rini)
More Thoughts on the Party Massacre (Bill Rini)
Dairy of a Rubber-less Traveler, Cont. (Otis)
Much Ado About Something (Scurvy Dog)
24 Hour Party People (Scurvy Dog)

All this reminds me of a really good singer in a mediocre band who ditches the rest of the band to start a solo career. The star was always the singer and the star here was Party Poker. Pretty soon she'll be strung out from too much traveling and from chasing the dragon too many times at 4am.

In all honesty, I don't play on any of Party Poker's skins anymore. I used to love playing on Empire Poker under my super-secret screen name and especially their tournaments. I would also do the occasional bonus whoring over there, but those days are over. I pretty much stopped playing on Empire and played tournaments on Full Tilt for a while. These days, I just play on Party Poker (cash games), Poker Stars & Full Tilt (tournaments), and Titan Poker (bonus whoring).

How does this affect me? Not much. Instead of 70K players on Party, there are only 40K. Fish are fish. Donkey are donkeys.

How does this affect the blogging community? I guess if you have rake-back deals with those sites, you just got properly fucked. But as a Party Poker affiliate, maybe I can pick up a few new players? Don't forget to use bonus code: TAO4.

I played in a tournament this past weekend on Party Poker and I got caught in the middle of some sort of upgrade on their servers. I was refunded the money but when I logged back into Party Poker, I discovered a few new changes.

Am I a bot?

I think I am. Whenever I'm asked to fill out those "word verifications" I never get it on the first shot. I always need a second or third chance to get it right. Maybe I'm just retarded or perhaps I got bot blood running through me, but I always fail the word verification on the first try! I used to be a suit and a sheep. But a robot? When I sat down, a pop-up screen asked me to do a word verification to insure that I am not a bot. Party Poker is giving off a new illusion of safety. I appreciate the effort.

Party Poker is also trying to hook degenerate poker players into playing Blackjack by adding a nifty little button to your tables and the main lobby. Bill Rini has a post on how to remove those images. Check that out.

I stopped playing Blackjack in casinos because it's -EV. I used to count cards and I was not as successful as those MIT teams, but I did good for someone like me. I had a big score at the Caribe Hilton in San Juan, Puerto Rico during Spring Break one year in the early 1990s. That was the first time I actually played in a casino. I once played at a table by myself at 6am in the Casino Magic in Biloxi, MS. I played two hands at once, betting up to $100 per hand while my college friends watched in awe. This was over 10 years ago and I won over $2K in a few hours. They comped us McDonalds. Cheap bastards.

Senor and I used to make runs to Mohegan Sun to play Blackjack from NYC when it first opened in the mid-1990s. My first several trips to Las Vegas included hours at the Blackjack tables. I usually won a lot or lost a lot. I couldn't handle the swings so I would play poker, mostly Seven-card Stud, to slow down the bleeding on bad days. In my early 20s, I also made regular trips to Atlantic City for Blackjack and some poker at the Taj.

I'll never play Blackjack online although I watched Grubby go on a nice run the last time I was in Las Vegas and he let me crash at his apartment. Party Poker is trying to get interested folks into their new project... Party Casino... which is supposed to open next year sometime.

I started throwing more dice after I moved to Las Vegas earlier this year. Nothing too serious. I'm up lifetime playing craps, but that can all end on one roll.

Maybe I should start playing the numbers with the bookies like those old Italian ladies do at the bakery on te corney where I grew up in the Bronx? Mafia-run lotteries are not rigged like online poker, pro-wrestling, U.S. Presidential elections, and boxing.

******

A couple of things before I go. I was invited to attend a Poker Stars VIP Event in New York City tonight downtown near Times Square. Chris Moneymaker, Greg Raymer, Isabelle Mercier, and 2005 WSOP winner Joe Hachem will all be there. Oh and I think that Otis is supposed to be there too. Stay tuned for a recap of that.

Tonight, ESPN is finally airing the main event! Flipchip has a great post about that. You should re-read my live blogging updates of Day 1A and Day 1B. Set those TiVos and VCRs!

Don't forget to check out Flipchip's 2005 WSOP Photo Gallery.
posted by Pauly at 10/11/2005 08:19:00 AM | Permalink |

 
The Tao of Risk

"The general who thoroughly understands the advantages that accompany variation of tactics knows how to handle his troops. The general who does not understand these may be well acquainted with the configuration of the country, yet he will not be able to turn his knowledge to practical account." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

After the overwhelming response from last Monday's post called Empiricism, Kierkegaard, Catholic High School Girls, and Poker, I realize that anything I write today will not be as good or meaningful so I decided to just go for it again. I'll be taking a risk today trying to mix half-baked pop culture references, with Wall Street investment strategy and my tweaked perspective of Shakespeare.

Yes, the word of the day is risk.

The best thing that I liked about Wall Street were the high priced hookers that looked like supermodels. The second best thing was being able to risk your entire client's bankroll on a single trade. That's the equivalent of moving all in for your chips, however, there's zero emotional attachment because it's not your money. It's fairly easy to risk everything when you have nothing to lose.

For most of you who are invested in the financial markets, I hope that you have a competent broker who's going to look out after your interests instead of either churning and burning your account for more commissions to pay for his girlfriend's spendthrift habits or someone who is going to treat your money like it's his Mother's nestegg instead of recklessly putting your entire savings at risk on a single trade. Now that rarely happens only in Hollyweird movies or in really awful anecdotes that you'd overhear at one of those gaudy New York City cocktail parties on the Upper East Side. The stiff suits on Wall Street despise rogue traders.

One of the key essentials to investing and accumulating wealth is money management. There are many similar traits that you would undertake for bankroll management. Over the long term, the poker players with the most money should be those with the best money management skills. Due to the high variance of poker and the -EV of playing in a lot of poker tournaments, you need to be careful about your bankroll. How many times have you made a big withdraw for an unnecessary personal expense and discovered that you went on a losing or cold soon after? Did you freak out because your bankroll was not sufficient to handle that bad streak? What happens if another bad streak comes along a few weeks later? Then another? And another? A competent money manager would foresee those possible disasters and be able to compensate for any fluctuations in your bankroll.

Another key to investing is diversity. It's easy to simply play NL tournaments if you are running well. But what happens when you are off your game or stuck in a cold run of cards? That's when you need to play other types of games. Perhaps you should switch from Limit to No Limit or from Omaha Hi/Lo ring games to NL SNGs. It's essential that you are able to vary the types of games that you play. You are taking a step back without walking away from the tables altogether. Playing a different game will give you a different perspective and does wonders for your damaged psychological nature. It's a proven fact that even the best players in the world succumb to depression after multiple losing sessions. A quick win in another game can boost your frail ego out of the doldrums. And sometimes when you play something different, you rediscover the simple joy of the game of poker.

Another big key to investing is risk assessment and management. I used to ask prospective clients what their safety level was. How much are they willing to risk? The general rule was that the older you were, the more conservative your investment approach had to be. The younger clients with money could afford to take chances and bigger risks since they were still 30-40 years away from retirement age and did not need to be careful about blowing their entire savings.

Back to the opening Sun Tzu quote...

"The general who thoroughly understands the advantages that accompany variation of tactics knows how to handle his troops. The general who does not understand these may be well acquainted with the configuration of the country, yet he will not be able to turn his knowledge to practical account."

That quote reminds me of something that one of the partners in my old firm used to talk to us younger brokers about. He preached that we should be spending more time reading Sun Tzu than the Wall Street Journal. He reminded me of Ben Affleck's character in the film Boiler Room. He was a big swinging dick and everyone on the trading floor knew it. I never played poker with him, but I imagined that he'd be one tough son of a bitch at the poker tables. He often spoke to us about: Opportunistic Flexibility in Adapting Strategies and Tactics to Situations.

Basically the Wall Street veteran was saying that although it's important to have a game plan, it's far more important to be flexible and make decisions on the fly regarding changing your strategy based on the information you have gathered in front of you. The hardest part about working on Wall Street was the pressure to make snap decisions that could affect every single client in your "book." You never know when those decisions are going to come up. You can only prepare yourself with the most information possible and based on prior experiences, assess the risk that is involved with your decision. The best poker players, and more specifically, the best NL tournament players in the world all seem to consistently make great decisions. They are all also skilled in looking at a situation and being flexible enough to change their style of tactical play to gain an advantage, even in the middle of a hand!

In William Shakespeare's epic play Hamlet, the main character is Hamlet, a Danish prince who's really just a spoiled rich kid who's slacking off in France drinking and banging French broads while his Uncle Claudius kills his father, the King of Denmark. Hamlet's mother weds his Uncle Claudius who takes the throne. Upon his return to Denmark, Hamlet finds his world all fucked up and even his love Ophelia is being manipulated by Claudius. Hamlet draws a ton of criticism because he lost his shit and went crazy spiraling into the madness of his own twisted mind, while others cite his incestual love for his mother, the Queen of Denmark, as the reason for his dementia. For me, Hamlet's biggest downfall was his inability to act quickly and make decisions on the fly in order to avenge his father's murder. He should have whacked Claudius upon his return home and everything whould have been settled and his Mother and Ophelia never would have died. That's what Michael Corleone would have done. Even in Shakespeare's time, taking risks and making quick decisions were an integral part of society and failure to do so would result in the worst of consequences.

Another Sun Tzu quote comes to mind...

"Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him."

The winning poker player/investor is able to adjust their tactics and implement them without any difficulties. More importantly, a player needs the psychological capacity, mental strength, and discipline to adapt their implementation tactics and adjust to the patterns or the volatility of the other players/markets. Winning players are also able to adapt to situations beyond human control. That means minimizing tilt.

When assessing risk at the poker table or in investing, you will discover that in every advantageous situation, there are equally inherent potential disadvantages. In order to be successful, you need to quickly identify the potential disadvantages, undertake any precautionary measures to combat the potential disadvantages, and at the same time focusing on pursuing the advantage and maximizing your edge.

Conversely, in every disadvantageous situation, there is an inherent potential to capitalize on a developing advantage. That's a way to minimize or eliminate your loses.

Over the long term, the most successful investors and poker players engage in constant ongoing and conscious risk taking. Players who play a lot of pots sometimes win frequently because they are constantly putting their chips at risk. I'm not suggesting that you play more hands, but I am suggesting that you need to take more disciplined risks, especially in tournaments.

We would love to have control over the weather, but we can't. We also have no control over how the stock market is going to perform, and we sure as hell cannot control what cards fall on the river. We can however, create a forecast on tomorrow's weather or what the bond market is expected to do when it opens tomorrow. We can also do the same with poker. Although you cannot influence the outcome of the hand, based on the information in front of you (betting patterns, player's style, and the flop), you can make a probability forecast for the remainder of the hand using your best risk management skills assessing your exposure while implementing the proper tactical adjustments. The key thing to remember is not whether or not your forecast is right or wrong. Rather, did you maintain the flexibility to adapt your strategies and tactics based on the realities of the situation? If you did, then you are one step closer to being a winning player.

"It's a zero sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn't lost or made, it's simply transferred from one perception to another." - Gordon Gekko, Wall Street

The most fearless players are not afraid of risking their stacks. The most fearless investors are the ones who are willing to go broke on a single deal or trade. You have to determine the level of risk you are most comfortable playing with and then maximize your fearlessness at the tables.

******

By the way, Happy Thanksgiving Day to all my Canadian readers. Joanne told me that Canadians eat moose on today instead of turkey. Nice. Happy Moose Day!
posted by Pauly at 10/10/2005 07:24:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Tao Week in Review

Monday 10.3.05: Empiricism, Kierkegaard, Catholic High School Girls, and Poker
Tuesday 10.4.05: Radio Free Pauly and WSOP on ESPN Tonight
Wednesday 10.5.05: October Baseball, Think of London, Vegoose, and the Squirter
Thursday 10.6.05: The Carnage

Check out the Poker Prof's latest post called Frozen accounts and the chill factor in on-line poker. Also, Bill Rini discusses the topic of variance in a post titled High Variance Poker vs. Low Variance Poker.
posted by Pauly at 10/09/2005 01:06:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Friday Dump Day: Referrals, Pauly's Pub, and Party Poker

Yesterday was interesting with this new twist added to living in the big city. Anyway, I continued to live my life like always. Because if I don't play online poker, then the terrorists win, right?

I played in a MTT on Party Poker yesterday and grinded my way into the money. I finished in 71st out of 1615. I achieved Joanne's 10% mark of greatness in MTTs. I was up until 6am writing and didn't get out of bed until a little past 11am. Within a hour or so, I was on a table at Party Poker. In the first five hands... I tripled up. I folded the first hand 8-8 UTG. I would have turned quads and tripled up because two guys with A-x moved all in on an ace high flop. The second hand I had J-J and flopped a set against A-10. He flopped an ace and put me all in the flop and I doubled up. I also won a pot in the LB with 5-5. I folded the button and then I found J-J again. Two limpers in front of me and I raised. I got one caller and we saw the flop of J-J-9. Yikes, I flopped quads. Player bet into me on the flop and the turn. I called both times. On the river, he bet and I raised. He reraised all in and I called. He had 9-9 and flopped a boat! I tripled up and held the chiplead for a few minutes.

Last night, I played a ring game on Party Poker while I watched the Rangers/Canadians game and got the Hilton Sisters three times in a half hour. They held up 2/3 of the time.

I have a busy weekend with the Yankees and the MLB playoffs along with writing, so I'm going to try to find some time to play ring games and at least one tourney per day this weekend.


Five Top 5 Poker Lists

It's been a while since I did some of my Top 5 lists so let's have 5 of them, eh?

5 Fearless Pros I Don't Want to See at My Table...
1. Layne Flack
2. Gus Hansen
3. Chip Reese
4. Phil Ivey
5. Devilfish

5 Pros I'd Like to Get on Tilt by "Dropping the Hammer" on Them...
1. Phil Hellmuth
2. Mike Matusow
3. Annie Duke
4. Josh Arieh
5. Scott Fischman

5 Random Pros I'd Drink All Night and Play Poker With...
1. Minneapolis Jim Meehan
2. The Unabomber
3. Humberto Brenes
4. My Main Man Freddy Deeb
5. Scotty Nguyen

5 Random Pros I Make a Prop Bet With...
1. Phil Ivey
2. Mike Matusow
3. Robert Williamson
4. Rafe Furst
5. Sammy Farha

Recent Poker Playing Music...
1. The Grateful Dead
2. John Butler Trio
3. Widespread Panic
4. John Coltrane
5. The Beatles


Referrals

Now's the time when I thank everyone for the referrals over the past week, especially the following bloggers:

Top 12 Referrals:
1. Las Vegas and Poker Blog
2. Iggy
3. Up for Poker (CJ, Otis & GRob)
4. Aaron Gleeman
5. Wil Wheaton
6. Tao of Pauly
7. Double As
8. Bill Rini
9. Card Squad
10. HDouble's The Cards Speak
11. The Poker Grub
12. The Poker Nerd

Pauly's Pub Football Pool Week 4 Update

Team of the Week: World of Dorkcraft 12 wins

The Skinny: The World of Dorkcraft (Poker Geek) is still hot. I wonder if the Geek is getting a herd of Ewoks to run crunch numbers all week for him before he submits his picks? Speed & Weed (Armen) is a close second. Austin Drunk (Matt S.) and Sycophantic Sheep (BoyGenius) are tied for third and Killer Beas (JK) rounds out the Top 5. Good news is that I'm finally beating Donavon McNabb's momma!!! Everyone is still in this. There's plenty of time left to make a run. The battle of the basement continues with CornRowsNCrunkJuice (Spider) joining JustaDrunkCanuck (Joanne) and Acrobatic Ass Assassins (Johnny Flopbot).

Top 4:
1 World of Dorkcraft (PokerGeek) 41
2 Speed & Weed (Armen) 40
3 Austin Drunk (Matt S.) 38
3 Sycophantic Sheep (BoyGenius) 38

Visit Pauly's Pub to see the complete standings. My team The Redneck Riviera is tied for 16th place.


Some Other Notes

Usually I discourage readers from asking me to post stuff and personal messages on this blog because if I accomodate one person wishes, I have twenty others requesting the same thing. However, there are two things I would like to mention because I believe in ther causes.

Firstly, Paul, the admin. of the Card Clubs Network, which hosts the forums for The Lord Admiral Card Club Podcast, is hosting a Katrina Relief Tournament at Gamesgrid.com on Saturday, October 8th at 13:00 eastern or 1pm ET. The buy-in is $15, of that $10 will go to the Red Cross and $5 will go to the prize pool. There will also be other prizes such a registered copies of Digital Donohoe's Tournament Poker, subscriptions to Bluff Magazine, A copy of Phil Gordon's Little Green Book on Audio CD and several others as well.

Secondly, Hatch is walking in the Nashville American Heart Association Heart Walk two weeks from Saturday to raise money for the AHA. Hatch had a pacemaker put in two years ago (at 35 years old) so he has a keen interest in Heart Disease research and awareness. For more information visit this link.

That's it for now. Have a good weekend.
posted by Pauly at 10/07/2005 07:56:00 AM | Permalink |

 
The Carnage

My mom had a huge leak in the bathroom in her apartment and I had to sit and babysit the plumbers to make sure they didn't steal anything while she was at work. I was there at 8:30am, the time the super said they would arrive. They didn't show up until11:30am and then spent the next 90 minutes tearing down the wall and ceiling. The didn't leave until 4:20pm.

While they removed a pipe that was 50 years old, I sat and played two MTTs on Party Poker. I took 330 out of 580 and 22 out of 100. I was knocked out of both on a bad beat and I'm starting to feel like Phil Hellmuth playing in these MTTs online. I felt like I was going to make the final table in the last one I played and ended up busting out at 22.

Here comes another Party Poker bad beat story. I had Q-Q and raised 4.5 the BB with the Hiltons. One limper called with A-4. The flop was 2-5-2. He checked, I bet the pot and he moved all in for the rest of his chips... maybe 300 more. He showed A-4 and I had the Hiltons. He rivered an ace on me. I was going to punch a hole in the wall but I remembered that Mario and Luigi were already punching holes in walls and getting paid to do that. I was eventually KO'd by the same guy when my J-9s lost to his 9-7o. Talk about getting kicked in the junk twice.

So be it.

It had been a while since I played MTTs on Party Poker. When I lived in Las Vegas this summer, I'd play a $100 MTT once a week from the Redneck Riviera on dial up of all things while listening to the inbred and pot-bellied kids next store engage in the usual early morning slap-fights. I bled away a good portion of my online bankroll playing those $100 MTTs on Party Poker.

*****

Lastly, the skies are dark and grey in my world. I just found out that another Hollyweird starlet was knocked up... and not by me. Check out what my second favorite NYC socialite, Mui, had to say about the latest dish about Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise. Even Al Cant Hang is pretty bummed out. He was the first person to clue me in.

Dear Katie,

You blew it. You could have gotten knocked up by me and I would not have made you convert to my cult, er religion. Where I might lag behind Tom in boyish good looks, I make up for in height and girth.

First you ditch Dawson. Now this. We all thought this Tom & Katie thing was a nice publicity stunt, something concocted by your PR reps. We all went along for the ride like it was some really bad April Fools joke. But now, this joke has reached absurd levels.

My heart weeps for thee,
Pauly

First the Yankees lose Game 2 and now this. Ouch. It's been a rough last 12 hours in my world. Time to seal the windows, turn on the gas, and read Sylvia Plath.
posted by Pauly at 10/06/2005 11:39:00 AM | Permalink |

 
October Baseball, Think of London, Vegoose, and the Squirter

First of all, go read Otis. He was just in London covering the EPT. Now he's in Baden. That's in Austria for all you geographically challenged folks.

I'd love to head to Dublin at the end of the month, but I'll be in Las Vegas covering a WPT event and attending the Vegoose music festival. I gave up attending several summer music festivals this year in order to cover the WSOP. Which reminds me... I was lucky enough to score tickets to Widespread Panic on Halloween in Las Vegas in addition to a few other late night shows like Trey Anastasio Band and STS9. If anyone has any extras to Galactic, please let me know. By the way, I posted a short bit about Vegoose over at Las Vegas and Poker Blog. Take a peek.


October Glory

Last night marked the first of what I hope will be many long nights in October. My home town team, the Yankees took the first step towards regaining pinstripe glory with a 4-2 victory over the California Anaheim Los Angeles Angels. The Moose was loose! Mike Mussina looked excellent in his six innings. He was getting a lot of first pitch strikes to batters and he's tough to beat when he's ahead in the count. Moose's stellar pitching performance was much needed from the Yankees. Add Robinson Cano's huge bases clearing double during a two out rally in the first inning and that ended up being all the Yankees needed to take a quick 1-0 lead in a short series against the Angels.

Of course, the Red Sox lost to the White Sox earlier in the day and the Cards also took a 1-0 series lead. Tonight, the Yankees and Wang need to pick up one more win before they return home to the Bronx on Friday and have Randy Johnson pitch.

In today's action David Wells tries to even the score for the Red Sox in Chicago against Buehrle. And the Astros and the Braves play Game 1. I'd like to see a St. Louis Cardinals and NY Yankees World Series. What can I say, I'm an old school kinda guy.


Tao of Online Poker

I had been playing MTTs on Titan Poker recently and I've been getting whooped. I had to break out the "cup" to absorb all the kicks in the junk. I checked my notes/stats and I'm not joking when I say that every time I've gotten knocked out of a Titan Poker tournament, it's been on an awful bad beat. I feel like Phil Hellmuth. I guess it's that the players are so bad. I might be a monkey playing in a room filled with donkeys. Like the Rolling Stones said, "I'm just a monkey man."

I've been back to playing hit and run poker over at Party Poker. I've been jumping back and forth between the $3/6 tables and the $5/10 tables in quick sessions. I found myself playing $3/6 when I'm multi-tasking and $5/10 when can give it my full attention. I've also been lurking around the PLO tables where I've been flopping a bunch of monster redraws, but can't seem to pick any of those pots up. Man, I actually miss the days when I'd grind out 6-8 hour sessions on the $25 and $50 NL tables. OK, I don't actually miss those days, but I miss the freedom I had to be able to play for several hours straight.

I was invited to visit a new card room here in New York City by the owners of said room. I've been too busy with writing projects to sneak off. With the baseball playoffs, it makes it impossible for me to find any time this week to play.


Prop Bet of the Week: Senor and the Squirter

I guess this is the time where I'm supposed to write about the bachelor party I attended on Saturday in a swanky suite downtown. I'm not going to. Some things are best left un-blogged. Besides wives and girlfriends of friends of mine might be smart enough to check my poker blog in addition to my main blog to catch some juicy nuggets about this weekend.

I ain't gonna rat out my friends.

However, one of the funniest things I heard all weekend was when one of the strippers politely asked that no pictures be taken since she was a school teacher.

There's only one juicy nugget from this weekend that I'll share with you. It involves a prop bet, a squirter, and my buddy Senor. If you don't know what a "squirter" is, then you'll have to stop now and do a quick Google search or ask a co-worker or friend to clue you in on squirters. Or check out this NSFW link on female ejaculation. Like I said it's NSFW so you have been warned.

I'll wait a moment for you to do some quick research before I continue...

OK, so now you know what a squirter is. I expect that half of you are turned on while the rest are just mortified. Great. By the way, even Aristotle, one of our greatest philosophical minds, wrote about female ejaculation. And I shall briefly touch on the subject in this here poker blog. I have sunk to a new low. I pimped Party Poker and wrote about female ejaculation in the same post.

One of the "entertainers" we hired for the bachelor party had an impressive resume. Included in her list of tricks that should could perform was the rare act of squirting. She sat in a chair and ejaculated for us. Most of it collected and soaked into the cushion of the chair. The stain was roughly about the size of half a slice of a pizza. I turned to an inebriated Senor and offered him up a prop bet. I've known Senor since we were both 18 and pledged the same fraternity together. We've traveled all over the world together raising hell and he's the guy who started "Elevator Gambling" with me in Las Vegas many years ago. We've also done prop bets on three continents and in over twenty plus states.

As we both admired at the stain, I offered Senor $20 that he couldn't stick his nose in the squirter's puddle of ejaculation for ten seconds. He quickly said yes and parked his face and nose in the middle of the stain. We all counted out to ten seconds and Senor triumphantly collected $20 from me.

"It smelled like chicken broth," he added as he wiped his nose and took a huge swig on his glass of Johnny Walker Black.

Just another Saturday night of prop bets in the big city.
posted by Pauly at 10/05/2005 08:04:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Radio Free Pauly and WSOP on ESPN Tonight

I was in horrible shape and still drunk when I taped my interview with Sean & Headhunter Mark on Sunday morning for the Lord Admiral Card Club Radio Show and Podcast. If you don't know by now, it's the best podcast dedicated to poker in the universe and I was wicked hungover after an all-night bachelor party here in the big city.

I'm no Joey Jeremiah, but over the last several months, I've become a huge cult figure in Canada thanks to Cinci Sean & Brent Stacks. As always, I'm happy to be a part of their amazing show. Sean and Brent are working hard every week in Toronto to get their podcast done (for free) so stop by and show your support.

I had a tough time hearing Sean during the taping, so comedy ensued. We discussed a bunch of things in a short ten minute interview about my trip to Barcelona, my current book project, and Truckin'. My interview begins at 16:00 of the podcast. Columbo also features one of his One Minute Mysteries.

You can download the MP3 of this week's show... Episode 46: Here. (Right Click and Save As)
You can download the MP3 of last week's show... Episode 45: Here. (Right Click and Save As)

If you want to catch up and listen to previous episodes, please visit their archives over at Brainscat. Stop by Card Club at Lord Admiral Radio and check them out. Thanks again to Sean and Stacks and Mark for having me on.

Moving on...

Tonight marks the last night that ESPN will be airing non-Main Event stuff. Here's what they will be airing:

Event #28: $5K Limit Event (Tao of Poker Live Blogging)
Recap Event #28 (Las Vegas and Poker Blog)

Event #31: 5K Short-handed NL (Tao of Poker Live Blogging)
Recap Event #31 (Las Vegas and Poker Blog)

The Short-handed Event #31 features Doyle Brunson, Minh Ly, Layne Flack, Scotty Nguyen, and Jason Lester! You know who wins that one right? And Event #28 features... a former professional athlete, an actor, a mother of four, the son of a famous poker player, a law student, a small business owner, a magazine publisher, and a seasoned tournament veteran who's seeking his first bracelet. Seriously, it's another great final table including Annie Duke, Joe Sebok, John Phan, and Greg "FBT" Mueller. Oh and that dude from Welcome Back, Kotter is also in it.

Be sure to visit Flip Chip's 2005 WSOP Photo Gallery. Also take a peek at the Poker Prof's extensive 2005 WSOP tournament results page.
posted by Pauly at 10/04/2005 09:03:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Empiricism, Kierkegaard, Catholic High School Girls, and Poker

"That's what I like about high school girls. I get older and they stay the same age." - Wooderson, Dazed and Confused

Instead of rushing up a post in less than fifteen minutes in between mucking crappy hands on Party Poker, I decided to take a day or so and compose a post. I never do that, but this blog has been lacking in some original philosophical content aside from the occasional existentialist conversation with strippers.

I was inspired by a ride on the subway (more elaboration later) combined with the way I felt after reading HDouble's most recent gem called The Path to Poker Mastery to write this specific post. Both moments got me thinking about life and poker and more specifically my writing especially on all of my blogs. The origins of these maudlin thoughts started last Thursday. I just ate lunch at a diner with an ex-girlfriend on a tenebrous day in the city. As it began to rain I briskly walked down Fifth Avenue past the main library and the secretaries on their lunch break and then past a few suits shouting into their cellphones near Lord & Taylor making my way to the foot of the Empire State Building where I collided with a group of tourists from Missouri. During that time it took me to walk ten city blocks, the light showers developed into a heavy downpour. I was lost so far deep in the hallways of my mind, that I didn't realize it was pouring outside.

Why did I zone out? And was the rain a metaphor for a drastic change in mood?

I was thinking about how little time I put into my blogs these days. What you see here and on my other blogs represent a small portion of what I write everyday. My half-baked and unorganized thoughts about poker have always gone here. But I haven't had too many original thoughts lately and swamped with work projects. Sure I've been covering poker tournaments... WSOP, WPT, EPT, and the UPC... and that's an experience I'm grateful to have everyday. As I've slowly developed into a tournament reporter, my posts have become more geared towards providing information and current events. Sure it's my take on the events that's creative and reflective of my writing style. But that type of work is not satisfying several artistic needs that I seek out when I write. I need to have that aspect of my life flourish otherwise I get depressed, moody, self-destructive, and resentful. Then I become a real asshole and pain in the ass. That's why the little beginning nuggets about the Redneck Riviera during the 2005 WSOP saved me from reaching the brink of utter insanity.

Last Thursday I roamed around the city looking for Brazilian hookers and cheap cocaine (or was it cheap hookers and Brazilian cocaine?) for the impending bachelor party I was supposed to attend. That's when I muttered to myself, "Every day we're searching for something."

When I got home, I hit up Google to see if that was a Bob Dylan lyric that I lifted or perhaps it was something I once read in a Shakespeare play. It didn't quite match. I had an original thought, or at least at that moment it was good enough for me. Finally inspired, I began writing this post. At first the first draft rattled itself off in my head for the remainder of Thursday. I sat down for a few hours on Friday to write it, but kept getting distracted by phone calls. Finding a call girl in NYC to blow thirty guys in a row in a hotel suite a few blocks from Ground Zero is a lot harder than you think. You have to double check references these days. And right now as I write this, it's early Monday morning and my intentions on spending several days penning a spectacular post have fizzled out. That's what happens when I embark on a two-day ya-yo bender with old friends. That demonstrates part of why I was slumping at the poker tables during September. Lack of focus and discipline and weakness in character has been a liability my entire life.


Empiricism

John Locke was a British philosopher and part of the modern or traditional empiricism movement. The basic premise behind empiricism is that all knowledge comes from observation and experience. Applying that to poker is pretty simple. You cannot become a winning poker player in the long term unless you have excellent observation skills and experience.

You can read every book every written on poker. You can memorize every word from Sklansky and you know every percentages and odds on every possible hand. Great. That all means jack shit at the poker tables. Sure you might have studied kung-fu. But until you successfully fight off six possible gang-rapers in a small prison shower, you'll never know if what you learned was valuable or whether or not you wasted your time.

You have to log a lot of hours playing poker. Lots of it. The internet gives you an ability to play an accelerated amount of hands. However, unless you are going to play 100% online that's not good enough. You need to play extensively at a live poker table. You might not like playing in a casino because the traffic is too bad or the rake is awful or the people next to you smell or the action is too slow and boring and because the newer and inexperienced dealers make too mistakes. But unless you park your ass in a chair in a casino and suck down twelve hours worth of casino-fabricated oxygen everyday for ten years, you'll never learn how to win over the long run and understand the human element to poker.

I think about how my writing applies here. I just didn't become an overnight sensation by starting up a poker blog and then getting snatched up to cover the WSOP. I've been writing for over a decade, struggling to make sense of myself and my art. And all my experiences and observations helped get to me to where I'm at today. Ten years has been a longer commitment than most jobs and relationships some of my friends have had (including myself). I almost attempted to snag a Masters in writing (I was accepted but never went) but I knew that piece of paper meant nothing and I'd sink deeper into debt trying to get the validation of a bunch of wine-drenched, Dockers-wearing, academic hacks. Real life experience is far more valuable than anything you can learn in a sterile classroom. You have to walk down dark and menacing alleys once in a while if you want to glimpse at the true side of humanity. You're never gonna see it sitting on your ass.

I began to understand that I needed to play more poker than I had been. Compare my abilities as a writer today than when I first walked out of my job on Wall Street almost a decade ago. I can see the vast difference in my creative ability. There's not much a jump in the technical sense, but as a person and artist, I have a decade of experience behind every word that I write today. My words have more depth than ever before. In ten more years I'm hoping that I will finally shift from being an average writer to a good one. If I apply that way of thinking to poker, then in ten years I might finally be a consistent winning player. Just when you think you know something, you realize you don't know shit. Every few years or so, I look back and think, "For fuck's sake, I was such a dumbass."


Kierkegaard

Soren Kierkegaard is Danish and although Gus Hansen is also from Denmark, Barry Greenstein falls more into a Kierkegaard-esque type of poker player. Kierkegaard was one of the first existentialist philosophers. He stressed the importance of the individual and the individual choice. Kierkegaard once said, "It is important for people to have a meaningful existence."

Applying that to poker, it's important for you to have a meaningful existence in your poker life. Know why you are playing. I've decided that it's no longer about money for me, but putting in the man hours to become a better player in the long run. I'm still a student of the game. I've been playing in different types of games and situations all over the country the past two years and I discovered that you need to learn how to adapt and play against different styles while moprhing your own. Always keep shifting your style of play and never allow anyone to record a pattern on your game. That's the level where I'm at right now.

I dropped about $500-600 out of my bankroll in September. Meaningless. In 2015 it won't matter if I won or lost $500 in a single month. What does matter that every hand I played from now to then went towards a larger and more significant goal of becoming a better player. As a collective, you are judged in the poker world by how much money you win or how many WSOP bracelets you own. When in reality, you are your own judge. That's the one who matters the most. How you determine competence of yourself as an indivudal should be based on the quality of your decisions and not by the size of your bankroll.

If you are content on playing socially and do not care about the monetary outcome, then so be it. Hey, there are hispters out there who are learning how to play because it's the cool thing to do. Sure that's not pure, but at least they understand their motivation. Plenty of poker players that I know pretty well are struggling not with how to play the game, but rather the simple answer to "why" they are playing poker.

Why are you playing poker? Is it for the money or the challenge? Are you bored and need a hobby? Do you need the social acceptance? Is it to rid yourself of several of your hangups? Are you a compulsive gambler and action junkie? Are you curious into the human psyche? Are you sexually or socially inadequate and need to overcome those haunting self-esteem issues with a winning session at the poker tables?

Back to Keirkegaard. He stressed that having "meaning" comes from whether or not your life has a permanent significance. Most problems arise when people believe that life has importance only temporarily. He continued to say that lives which are dedicated to pleasure will eventually lead a person into a stage of dissatisfaction and emptiness. The only way to feel significant is to have an ethical and responsible existence. And then you will achieve a sense of permanence and be comfortably living a meaningful life.

Barry Greenstien comes to mind again. He played poker in California for several years and developed into one of the best players in the world. Poker was temporarily important to him, but in order for him to find true meaning in why he plays, he shifted his focus to having a more responsible role in dealing with his poker winnings. He's been donating all of his tournament winnings to charity including Children Incorporated. With that knowledge, every time Barry sits down at a poker table he plays with an ease and confidence that what he's doing matters and more importantly... has significance in the long run. Barry will never freak out and question why he's playing poker.

You need to figure out why you play poker. And if you intend to play it for a living or over the course of the rest of your life, you have to decide what exactly the role it is going to be playing. Otherwise you are going to spiral into a deep depressive funk after another brutal river suck-out to some dipshit while asking yourself, "Why the fuck am I playing this game?"


Catholic High School Girls

I'm McCatholic as Ugarte likes to remind me. I attended Catholic and private schools in New York City up and through high school. Some my first brushes with sexuality happened during those formative years. I was a walking hard-on during puberty. And being surrounded by girls in short skirts and see-through white blouses really added to the horniness factor. That's where I developed my Catholic school girl fetish. It's been with me my entire life. Part of it is all that Catholic guilt and bottled up sexual aggression that the nuns and priests intimidated us into repressing.

I sat on the uptown subway and two Catholic high school girls got on the train. One of them was strikingly beautiful. If she wasn't wearing a uniform and had on regular clothes, I'd mistake her for just another hot woman on the subway. Of course I wouldn't have those controversial feelings that bombarded my mind. Those girls were at least half my age. In the South or in a foreign country, I could probably get away with acting upon those lustful thoughts. But here in the big city, they have rules and laws (Thank God) against those sorts of things.

I felt like one of those slimy old men in a Charles Bukowski short story. Like that sick and twisted degenerate gambler who offered bad drugs and cheap wine for a grope and a fingering session after a losing day at the track. I could not turn my eyes away from the one girl in particular. I'm a horrible person and was brainwashed by my own callow and puerile thoughts.

The urges. The rush.

I eventually collected myself. "Those were just thoughts and not actions," I reminded myself. OK, sure my thoughts were impure. But it's not a malfeasance to have naughty thoughts. It becomes an issue... morally, legally, religiously, and ethically if I act upon those erotic feelings. But I didn't and I exhibited restraint and didn't walk up to them and attempt my best Bobby Bracelet imitation.

How does avoiding hitting on Catholic high school girls on the subway apply to poker?

There are plenty of instances where I found myself infatuated with my hand or a specific situation, when in all reality, it was not proper for me to make any decisions aside from folding. Bleeding away your stack due to not being able to control yourself at the poker tables is a sure way for you to lose your bankroll in the long run and go broke and humiliate yourself. There will be times when you think what you see in front of you is an ideal situation, when in all reality, you have no business being there. Like jumping into a fishy $15-30 game when you only have a bankroll for $5-10. Sure that game can and should be beat, but you can't sit down in that without any sizeable ammunition.

Avoid the urge and take a cold shower instead.


Conclusion

The empiricist poker player knows that success will be bred from observation and experience. The existentialist poker players will tell you that you need to have a meaningful existence at the poker tables otherwise you will fail. The poker players with Catholic high school girl fetishes know that you can only look and don't touch unless they are 18.

All the money I've won to date does not reflect my talent as a poker player. It reflects how much luck I've had in my life. A tremendous amount in fact. When I made the transition from strictly live games to return to online play, I faltered and my bankroll suffered. I lost my discipline and was allowing myself to be distracted when I played online. I was reading too many poker blogs or answering email or surfing the far reaches of the web for pregnant women porn when I should have been focusing on the task at hand. I rarely lost focus at the tables in Las Vegas. I was always locked in and had a great read on players at the table. Once I started playing online, my strengths were overcome by my weaknesses.

What did I learn from this post?

1. Rededicate myself as a student of the game.
2. Continue to play as much as I can to develop into a good player in the long run.
3. Daily wins and losses don't mean as much as making good and quality decisions.
4. Continue to identify and isolate my weaknesses.
5. Maintain focus at the tables.

I had been winning since I moved to Las Vegas in June and winning often masks your liabilities. Hopefully I can learn from my mistakes over the past few months and evolve into a winning player over the next few years. Otherwise, I'm just wasting my time and I should start up a new blog called The Plaid Masturbation Monster.
posted by Pauly at 10/03/2005 06:33:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Hammer Time!!

I'm sick of covering poker tournaments. I want to play in one. Here's my shot...

posted by Pauly at 10/01/2005 04:20:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Week 3 Update: Pauly's Pub Pigskin Pick'em Pool

Team(s) of the Week: (Tie) I Like Pie and Sycophantic Sheep with 12 wins each

The Skinny: Looks like we have a three way tie for first between Armen's Speed & Weed, the Poker Geek's World of Dorkcraft, and BG's Sycophantic Sheep. Killer Beas and Austin Drunks are not far behind. In the battle of the basement, Acrobatic Ass Assassins and JustaDrunkCanuck are tied for last place. It's still Week 3 and anything can happen. Hang in there. Oh, and don't forget to do your picks!!

Top 5 Overall:
1 Speed & Weed (Armen) 29
1 World of Dorkcraft (PokerGeek) 29
1 Sycophantic Sheep (BoyGenius) 29
4 Killer Beas (JK) 28
4 Austin Drunk (Matt S.) 28

Visit Pauly's Pub to see complete standings and results. My team The Redneck Riviera is currently tied for 10th.
posted by Pauly at 10/01/2005 03:42:00 AM | Permalink |