Welcome to the gambling ramblings of Pauly... a writer, traveler, and degenerate

 
Fox Sports Poker

I wrote the lead story for the poker section on Fox Sports. Here's the article called 2006 WSOP Preview. It was just published. Take a peek.
posted by Pauly at 6/30/2006 04:12:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Bad Moon Rizen Leads the Pack in PLH

Performify tipped me off that his buddy Rizen (nee Eric Lynch) is currently the chipleader in Event #3 $1500 Pot Limit Hold'em. He's up against two Full Tilters.

Here's the final table players for Event #3 including chip counts (courtesy of Poker Wire):

1. Rizen (aka Eric Lynch) 455K
2. Rocky Enciso 247K
3. Rafe Furst 222K
4. John Juanda 147K
5. Burt Boutin 140K
6. C.K. Hua 122K
7. Rick Chase 95K
8. Alan Gilbert 88K
9. George Bronstein 15.7K

Dewey Tomko bubbled off the final table. Also going deep and making the money were Matt Hilger, Randy Jensen, the newest member of Team Poker Stars Victor Ramdin, Amnon Filippi, 2005 bracelet winner Isaac Galazan, Dan Alspach, Bryan Micon, The Grinder, Jesus, Randy Holland, Chau "Chow" Giang, Erica Schoenberg, and Brandon Schaefer.

By the way, if you piss next to me, then you make a final table. CK Hua did just that the other day and now he's trying to win a bracelet! Which means that one of these guys will make a final table sometime next week.

Last 5 Pros I Pissed Next To...
1. David Singer
2. Chris Bigler
3. Eric Mizrachi
4. Hoyt Corkins
5. Tex Barch

Otis will be doing excellent coverage of the event since Rizen is a Poker Stars guy. Poker Wire will be following Juanda and Rafe. The Tao of Poker will be following Widespread Panic. I'm off to Hollyweird for the weekend. Be back Monday.
posted by Pauly at 6/30/2006 01:31:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Poker Divas and Radio Days


Pauly, Liz, BJ, and Foiled Coup
For a third day in a row, I'm stooping to a new low and pimping Liz Lieu one more time. Can you blame me? She's cool. Funny. Smart. Hot. She crushes the competition. And she reads my blog. Everyday.

I ate dinner with Grubby at Kahunaville in Treasure Island. I ordered the Aloha Lime Chicken and the Big Kahuna Sundae for dessert. After dinner, I wandered back over to the Rio and ran into Liz and Wendy Measley. They both thanked me for linking up Liz Lieu and sending her a ton of traffic. Liz was especially excited and whipped out a sexy photo of herself. She autographed it for me.

When I walked into the media room, I noticed that Otis was on the floor and away from his work area. I left the autograph sitting on his laptop. When he saw it, he flipped me the finger.


Otis on "hot-poker-chick tilt" is hilarious to witness.

He was excited to tell me about his dinner with SNL alum Norm MacDonald, but as soon as he saw the autograph he knew that was nothing compared to getting autographed pic from the lovely and talented Liz Lieu.

* * * * *
When I walked into the Rio, Max Pescatori told me in passing that he translated two of my articles for his Italian poker site. Wow. I'm honored because that was the first time any of my work has been translated into a different language. Unless you count "Jive" as a language.

When I spoke to Nolan Dalla for a few minutes, he congratulated me on the Bluff Poker Radio gig. He also mentioned that how it was important that I got to cover this year's WSOP.

"You're writing is excellent. I'm a huge fan," he said.

Nolan is one of the people I respect the most in poker. To hear that from him gave me more encouragement to ignore the chipcounts and hand histories and find the real stories of this year's WSOP.

I spotted BJ in the hallway trying to pick up one of the hot chicks who works for Image Masters... "I used to run marathons, you know."

I also saw Tanya playing in the $1500 Limit event. She was at Joe Sebok's table and gave me a big hug.

* * * * *
I did my first show on Bluff Radio. I give my performance a D+. I could have done much better. I was timid and when I spoke, I sounded awful. Everyone at Bluff thought I did a good job but I strongly disagree. We had a few minor issues like not having taped interviews ready when we ready to play them. Hopefully all of this will be ironed out over the next few days. But starting next week, Spaceman said that we're gonna be doing the 4 to 5 hour segment by ourselves.

We had Nick Geber leading the way in the three-man booth. We were set up right in front of the final table. Even Andy Bloch mentioned that we had the best seats in the house.

Nick Geber is British and has an amazing radio voice. He's a true pro and does soccer games for Fox. I felt intimidated sitting in the same booth as him. We interviewed Carlos Mortensen a few minutes after he was knocked out in 9th place in Event #2 $1500 NL. We also had Andy Bloch sit in and talk blackjack with us.

I was only supposed to do an hour and ended up doing two. I'll return to the airwaves on Tuesday and will not be appearing this weekend on Bluff Radio. I'm going out of town to Hollyweird for the weekend. I'll be back at work on Monday.

* * * * *

Event #2 completed a few moments ago. I posted a recap of Event #2 $1500 NL over at Las Vegas & Poker Blog called Cantu Can Do It. Take a peek.

Like I said earlier, Carlos Mortensen was eliminated in 9th place after edning the first day as the chipleader. Mortensen busted after losing three crucial coinflips. The event became wide open but Brandon Cantu from Vancouver, WA (not Canada) prevailed. He won his first bracelet and over $750K in cash. Not a bad take for three days of work. That's a quarter of a million dollars per day for those of you who are mathematically challenged.

Here's the final table results:

Event #2 $1500 NL:
1. Brandon Cantu (Vancouver, WA) $757,839
2. Mark Ly (Los Angeles, CA) 416,816
3. Drew Rubin (Hollywood, FL) $226,597
4. Lee Padilla (Modesto, CA) $176,579
5. Brent Roberts (Staten Island, NY) $151,570
6. Don Zewin (Las Vegas, NV) $126,940
7. Ron Stanley (Henderson, NV) $107,614
8. Mark Swartz (Phoenix, AZ) $88,668
9. Carlos Mortensen (Las Vegas, NV) $71,617

* * * * *
Stop by Las Vegas & Poker Blog to check out some of Flipchip's 2006 WSOP Photos. Here's a sample:


"You wanna go Pumpkin Head?"
posted by Pauly at 6/30/2006 04:20:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Bluff Radio, Fossilman Makes More History, and Grubby's Secret Drawer

I will be a regular on Bluff Poker Radio (channel 125 on Sirius) for the remainder of the 2006 World Series of Poker. Spaceman asked me if I was interested in helping kill some dead air and I quickly agreed, especially since they are paying me off in blow and hookers.

At 4pm PCT or 7pm EST starting this Thursday June 29th, I will be appearing on Bluff Poker Radio for about an hour before they broadcast coverage of the final table at 5pm. I have no idea what I'll be doing/saying and will be making up stuff as I go along.

Unfortunately, you have to have Sirius Radio in order to listen to the program. If you have Sirius, I hope that you tune in and listen to the unofficial "Spaceman and Pauly Show" on Channel 125. This should be tons of fun because I can drink before the show and curse since it's satellite radio. Plus I get to work with my buddy Spaceman who is one of the producers of Bluff Radio!

I drank at the Hooker Bar with Otis again at dinner break. We both played the video poker as I sipped a Red Stripe and he knocked back Coronas and we discussed international politics and various complicated theories in quantum physics.

The video poker machines at the Hooker Bar are some of the loosest in Vegas. Last year Otis nailed quads four times and I pulled it off once. Definitely check them out. You might find yourself a lady of the night as well.

We were about to order another round when Friedman and Johnny Walker invited us to join them for dinner and drinks at the Tilted Kilt, an English style pub in the Rio.

I had never knocked back cold ones at the Tilted Kilt because the majority of my WSOP alcohol consumption took place at the Hooker Bar and occasionally at the Masquerade Bar. The waitresses were stunning and wore short plaid kilts. If you tried hard enough, you could almost see bush. The sultry waitresses looked like strippers dressed as catholic high school girls. Naturally, I was in heaven.

Our waitress named Lana liked me a lot. The big tip helped. I made a witty "Stella" joke while attempting my best Marlon Brandon impression. She laughed. And it wasn't one of those fake laughs. It was genuine.

I told Otis we'll be drinking for the rest of the WSOP at the Tilted Kilt.

* * * * *
Greg "Fossilman" Raymer made history again at the WSOP. He took 63rd place in Event #2 after he pulled a move with a stop and go. He had all his money in the pot with the best hand... and lost. Here's how Otis described the hand:

4:13pm--Well, I've always had faith in Greg Raymer's ability to put a great read on his opponent. He did it this time, pulling a decent stop-and-go from the big blind. Raymer was actually ahead with his A5 on a 446 board against his opponent's K3. Then the board ran out runner-runner diamonds to give his opponent the flush and knock Raymer out in 63rd place.

Raymer also became the only player that cashed in every WSOP event that featured 2,000 or more players, which included the last two WSOP main events. That's an amazing feat.

When day two of Event #2 started, Carlos Mortensen held the chiplead. He would let it slip away. When it got close to the TV bubble, his big stack took two huge hits and he ended up fighting for his tournament life as the short stack with Jen Harman. The angelic Jen Harman ran into A-A with Big Slick and finished in 11th place. Carlos Mortensen fought back and doubled up when he woke up with pocket Aces. They held up against Drew Rubin's Hilton Sisters. He ended up making the final table and is 7th in chips.

Here's Event #2 $1,500 NL Final Table chip counts (courtesy of Poker Wire):

1 Brandon Cantu 753K
1 Lee Padilla 753K
3 Drew Rubin 573K
4 Mark Ly 516K
5 Mark Swartz 359K
6 Don Zewin 342K
7 Carlos Mortensen 337K
8 Ron Stanley 283K
9 Brent Roberts 260K

Paul Darden went deep and took 32nd place. Bill Gazes, Erik Seidel, Phil Gordon, and Devilfish all cashed. They made the final five tables but were all eliminated. The Devilfish started the day 5th in chips but could not advance. Phil Hellmuth didn't win his tenth bracelet, but he cashed for the 49th time in his career at the WSOP when he finished in 67th place. All of those pros outlasted 2,700+ other players.

Also getting busted and making the money today were Tuan Le, John Bonetti, Carl Olson, E-Fro, and Blair Rodman.

* * * * *Random notes and thoughts...

You have to check out this revealing video that I made where I discover Grubby's Secret Drawer.

"I just saw a guy vomit on himself," Otis texted me as I was in the media room bullshitting with Nolan Dalla.

"Didya get a pic?" I texted back.

The lovely Liz Lieu sent me an email. She thanked me for all the traffic I sent her. Stop by her site and her journal. They also have a cool picture gallery. She sent me this pic that has not been published anywhere yet.


I'm a lucky guy when hot poker players like Liz send me "never-seen-before" pics of themselves via email. I hope to do a Q&A and an interview with her at some point over the next week or so.

I heard a hilarious story about one of the other media reps who met a hooker the other night. He didn't think she was a hooker at first. He was Albert Finney drunk and honestly thought that he picked up a hot chick. They started making out in his room and took the action over to the bed where she started jerking him off.

"If you want me to make you feel even more better, it's going to cost you $200."

He realized that the chick he had in his bed wasn't that easy, just one of those infamous Las Vegas hookers. He said he only had $20 left and handed her the last of his money... a $10 bill. He tried to negotiate a better deal as she teased his penis with her hands. He hoped that he could get off before she stopped stroking his salami.

She eventually persuaded him to go downstairs to the ATM. He also noticed that she snagged his $10 bill. As they started to walk out into the hallway she turned around and said, "Where are your shoes? You can't go out bare foot."

"That's right," he said and slammed the door.
* * * * *

You should be reading... Las Vegas & Poker Blog and Otis' Poker Stars Blog.
posted by Pauly at 6/29/2006 04:20:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Bad Beat Princess

"I cracked his (famous TV poker pro) pocket aces," she shouted into her cellphone as she rushed down the corridor sliding past the steady flow of other players on their break. She was well tanned with perfectly manicured nails. She wore a baseball cap and carried a purse that was worth twice as much as the blue book value of Grubby's 91' Geo Metro.

"I cracked fuckin' aces with my sixes too. It was so freakin' cool. Just like on TV!" she continued in a thick Long Island accent. I put her on somewhere near the Nassau/Suffolk County border as she hid her eyes behind oversized $400 designer sunglasses.

Right now there's a famous TV poker pro sitting around a NL cash game bitching with his other famous poker pro friends about that donkey of a tourist who called off all her chips with two overs on the flop and then rivered her two outer.

It's just another Wednesday at the Rio. Even Daddy's Little Princesses have been infected with the crack-like symptoms of tournament poker. They're jumping into the fight handing out bad beats to pros quicker than they can drop $2K on a shopping spree.

If one of them with a pretty face gets lucky and goes deep into one of these early events, they are going to get swallowed up by a major sponsor. The 2006 WSOP used to be tiny tournament in the smoke-filled back of The Horseshoe downtown. Now the WSOP is big time. Poker players and big business reps are roaming the hallways of the Rio like the pimps and the hookers on Tropicana Avenue.

The online poker room suites are opening up soon which means more free food and liquor for me. Last year, Full Tilt set the standard with their suite which had excellent food and a mini bar. They also had other stuff like chocolate bars and gave away tons of free schwag. Ultimate Bet, Poker Stars, and Doyle's Room had been setting up their spaces as the Roofers Convention finally left town. And Full Tilt is going to pull out all the stops this year.

* * * * *
Last night, Andy Black and Vince Van Patten were playing cash games. I think it was $25/50 NL. I haven't had the chance to sit down and play yet. The tables were packed last night. I'm making an effort to play at some point today.

Like rockstars banging groupies, poker pros are jumping in bed from one online site to the other. Victor Ramdin used to be a Full Tilter. Now he's a Poker Stars guy. Otis has a picture of Ramdin from earlier today sporting a Stars shirt. Last year, Poker Stars were baffled when two of their guys Marcel Luske and Noah Boeken wore FT shirts at the "featured TV table" during last year's main event.

I spotted Robert Mizrachi (the brother of the Grinder) in a FT jersey. He's one of their new "friends of FT" along with Carlos Mortensen, who ended the first day of Event #2 $1,500 NL as the chipleader. The former WSOP main event champion is seeking his third bracelet as he began day two with a mountain of chips.

2,776 players bought into Event #2. That's the second most number of players ever for any WSOP tournament. The final table will start on Thursday. Action will play down to nine tonight.

Here's Event #2 final table payouts:
1. $757,839
2. $416,816
3. $226,597
4. $176,579
5. $151,570
6. $126,940
7. $107,614
8. $88,668
9. $71,617

When Allen Cunningham won this event last year, he took home $725K which represented 22.81% of the total prize pool. This year's winner will take home about $758K or 18.2% of the total prize pool. In all fairness, Harrah's is paying out 270 places this year to 200 spots in 2005 for this event.

Oh now back by popular demand!

Last 5 Pros I Took a Piss Next To...
1. Freddy Deeb
2. Jean-Robert Bellande
3. C.K. Hua
4. Noah Boeken
5. David Williams

* * * * *

I heard a story about the father/son prop bet between Doyle and Todd Brunson against Joe Sebok and Barry Greenstien. I'm going to investigate more and get the full details. I heard it was somewhere between $100K and 500K and it's based on total combined earnings during this year's WSOP. Stay tuned for more details.

Before I go, I have to let you know that some good friends of mine Tom Murphy and Mike "Lucky Blind" Lacey are headed to Vegas shortly. They are some of the coolest guys I met through poker at the 2005 WSOP. And they can drink. Lots.

Here's part of an email I got from Tom today:

Subject: The Irish Are Coming

There are SOOOOOO many Irish coming this year, its going to look like Paddy's Day for a month!

Seriously, the local clubs are worried there wont be the attendance for the tournies while we're all out there. Easily 15 of my poker buddies are coming. So, there will be a lot of us to drink with this year!We're looking forward to it too.

Can't wait for those guys to show up. One of my favorite stories involving them happened at the WSOP final table. For most of the night they constantly bought me and Otis hotdogs and Coronas. Every poker fan in Ireland religiously followed Andy Black's progress through the coverage on their site Antes Up. After Andy Black was busted, they were pissed and took off to drink heavily and gamble. They packed up their laptops and hit the road since they only player of Irish significance was eliminated. Their last WSOP post that read, "For the rest of the final table, go read Pauly's blog."

* * * * *
You should be reading... Wicked Chops Poker and Joe Speaker's The Obituarium.
posted by Pauly at 6/28/2006 07:20:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Tilt-a-Otis

Otis was on tilt from the second I saw him. He dropped a decent amount at the tables last night. He wouldn't tell me the specific details because it was a bad beat. Then he went on super-mega-tilt when I told him about my hallway encounter with Isabelle Mercier.

It was the start of the dinner break and I started walking down the corridor. One of the doors to the tournament room opened up and the captivating Isabelle Mercier appeared before me. That was one of those cool moments that makes this job kick ass. She was in a disguise of sorts and wore a hat and I almost didn't recognize her.

Without hesitation I said hello and went in for a double kiss. And I got it. Pauly 1, Otis 0.

She told me she had 9K in chips at the break. Her hat said "Deal" on it which is a new poker flick coming out that she appeared in. She also wore a sexy "material girl" shirt. Stop by and check out the picture Otis took of Isabelle earlier today.

I walked back into the media room with a shit-eating grin on my face. I gloated to Otis about the double kiss.

"I hate you," he said without looking up from his laptop.

"I've been getting that a lot today," I muttered rubbing my cheek in the spot where Isabelle had just kissed me.

At dinner break, Otis and I wandered off to the Hooker Bar and we ran into Grubby. He followed along with us to the bar. The bartender remembered us from last year. Grubby went Lebowski on us and ordered a White Russian. Otis had his standard Corona and I got a Red Stripe.

We bullshited for the rest of dinner break. On our way back to the media room which takes about six minutes to walk from the Hooker Bar to the actual WSOP tournament area, Lacey Jones and Lynette Chan walked towards us. The last time I saw both of them was at the Playboy Mansion a couple of months ago. They told me that they both busted. Lacey pushed with a straight and a nut flush draw and caught blanks.

Lynette pointed at my Red Stripe.

"I see that you are working hard," she joked.

"Hey I wrote 2,500 words today," I blurted out.

They both decided that number was high enough to allow me to drink on the job.

* * * * *
I was talking to Friedman in the hallway when Andy Black sauntered past us. He wore a backwards red Full Tilt cap and smoked a cigarette.

"You boys gettin' on all right?" he said in his Irish accent as a couple of tourists stopped and got excited about their random poker pro sighting.

Andy explained to us how he was disappointed with his performance over the first couple of days. He wanted to get off to a hot start at this year's WSOP but faltered.

"Tell me how the fuck I pissed away 900,000 in chips last night?" he asked.

He started the final table of the Tournament of Champions as the chipleader and made a bad move with K-9s against Mike Matusow's K-K.

Andy pulled out a fistful of $1,000 chips out of his pocket inquired about the cash games. I summed it up in one word, "Juicy."

"Well then, I got some work to do," he answered and wandered off.

By the way, here's my first Liz Lieu update. She's no longer is sporting blonde hair. She's back to the dark hair look. She said she prepped for this year's event by relaxing the past week and resting up. She worked on her tan and went shopping. She suggested that I cut down the length my blog entries.

"You write too much. You're posts are so long!!!"

Liz also told me how bummed out she was that she would not be participating as a member of the Elle Team where she would donate her winnings in the Ladies Event to the American Heart Association. She was going to be a part of the Queen of Hearts Team but Elle negotiated a sponsor from a different site that Liz is affiliated with. She's a part of Martin's Poker and said that's where her loyalty lies.

I ran into a fellow blogger Zeem Jr. who was playing in Event #2. I snapped a few photos and this one is the best one because you can see Phil Hellmuth sitting right behind him. Zeem was shortstacked after dinner break and ran his 2900 up to over 9K then lost it all when he missed a big draw.


Zeem at the WSOP
I spoke to Spaceman briefly. He was working on the Bluff radio show. I also met some of the hotties that they have working.

I had a long talk with Earl Burton from Poker News. He just completed a nine part series on the WSOP. Take a peek. He introduced me to their intern, Stephen, who happens to read my blog.

As I write this, the players in Event #2 just made the money. More than 2700 players entered the event which is a record for a non-main event WSOP tournament. They took alternates for this event and even had some tables 11 handed. Well, the top 270 players made the money and the money bubble just broke according to Otis.

Carl Olson, who is friends with Brandon Schaefer, eliminated Texas Dolly. And Phil Hellmuth busted Clonie Gowen. Hellmuth is still alive and will cash in this event. Hellmuth now has 49 cashes and is tied with Men the Master for the overall lead.

Event #1 finally concluded today. 18 players who are employed by a casino in one way or another returned for day two of their $500 buy-in NL event. One of the players was Marsha Wagonner, who happens to be the wife of Kenna James. Chris Gros from Henderson, NV beat out Bryan Devonshire from Minneapolis, Minnesota for the victory in Event #1. Gros won $127,616 and the first bracelet of the 2006 WSOP after his 3-4o cracked Devonshire's Big Slick.

Here are some random pics from today:


The railbirds flocked to Texas Dolly's table


Nice hat, Andy


Paul Darden


Phil's back

* * * * *
You should be reading... CC's Quest of a Closet Poker Player and Otis at Poker Stars Blog.
posted by Pauly at 6/28/2006 04:05:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Flipchip Update

He was short on chips when he pushed all in with A-K. He had a race with J-J and rivered a King to double up. He had a little over 2K at that point and is sitting pretty with 2500 now.

At the table next to Flipchip was the lovely Lacey Jones. She's playing in eight or nine events, including the big one.


Lacey Jones
I bumped into Brandon Schaefer who just woke up. He's going to be playing tomorrow in the PL Hold'em event. I saw both Joe Hachem and Greg Raymer posing for pictures with fans. Right now I'm in the media room sitting next to Otis.

Another update...

6:15pm... Flipchip just busted when his A-A got snapped off by J-10. The opponent raised to 600 and Flipchip min re-raised to 1200. The guy called and flopped two pair. All the money went in on the flop and Flipchip busted out early.
posted by Pauly at 6/27/2006 08:01:00 PM | Permalink |

 
WSOP Event #2 $1,500 NL Day 1 and Event #1 Casino Employees NL Day 2

I arrived at the Rio early after grabbing a Texas Toaster sandwich at Sonic. I wandered down the hallway for my first official day of coverage of the WSOP. Just a few hours earlier, Mike Sexton won the Tournament of Champions around 7am after he beat Daniel Negreanu in a grueling hads-up match. On the final hand, Negreanu had Q-Js, which is a monster in heads-up play. Unfortunately, he ran into Sexton's pocket aces. After flopping a gutshot, Negreanu moved all and Sexton quickly called. He ended up with a boat which sealed the victory. The WPT announcer won bragging rights and $1 million in cash.

"You know, Mike Sexton really needs that money too," Chris Fargis joked with me when I told him who won.

Congrats to Mike Sexton and to Daniel Negreanu who won $325K for second place.

The first thing I noticed as I walked into the Rio were the huge Milwaukee's Beast cans lining the corridors. There were more random booths this year too as online sites and poker merchandising companies pimped their goods. The media room is all the way in the back and I slowly made my way down there past the hordes of railbirds, fans, and players in today's $1,500 NL event.

The first person I bumped into was Jay "Big Shot" Greenspan. He's working for Full Tilt again this year.

"When am I getting a copy of your book?" I asked.

"In a few weeks," he said with an excited look in his eyes.

Jay's a real writer and his book is going to be some of the best poker literature to come out this year. I'm going to get him to autograph a few copies and then sell them on ebay.

I stumbled upon the PokerStars booth and found Otis. He looked like he hadn't slept in days. Immediately I was worried. Otis had the twenty-yard stare in his eyes that most of us WSOP reporters got last year after a few weeks in the trenches. It's only day two and we're losing Otis. We made plans to hit up the Hooker Bar later in the night.

I got in line and waited for my badge. In front of me were two Craigs. Michael Craig, author of The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King and Craig Cunningham (CC) were securing their media credentials as I patiently waited. I also ran into Johnny Walker from Card Player in the media room. He was busy and I promised to tell him stories about the Widespread Panic shows at Red Rocks.

CC snapped a photo of me and we hung out in the hallway for an hour or so. He's covering the WSOP for Poker Works. The official media room would not be set up for several hours. There was a conference of roofers going on next door. Michael Craig showed me some of his notes about the roofers. Last year we had those pre-teen dance/gymnasts roaming around the Rio. With all those degenerate gamblers, it was an Amber Alert waiting to happen. Today, we had to deal with a roofers convention. As soon as they clear out, the room will be ours and I won't have to sit on the floor in the hallway.

I found John Caldwell from Poker News. He invited me to a viewing party to watch Jen Leo's appearance on Mansion's Poker new show Speed Poker at the Poker Dome. I also have a seat in the audience and will be cheering her on Sunday July 9th. Congrats to Jenny from the Block!

I found Mrs. Flipchip who was there to cheer on Flipchip from the rail. He won a seat into Event #2 and was fighting a nasty cold hoping to advance to Day 2. Nearby were Celine Dion's husband Renee and Gavin Smith. Minh Ly stopped me to say hello and John Phan rushed passed the silky Carmel Petresco and her boyfriend Daniel Alaei aka "the luckiest guy in poker."

In the hallway, Amir Vahedi was posing for a photograph as I could hear the raspy, cigarette-stained voice of Minneapolis Jim Meehan.

"This place is a fuckin' zoo," he barked at me.

Ted Forrest was on his cell phone as he navigated the crowded hallway like a skier doing the Giant Slalom.

"It's a madhouse," I overheard him shouting into his cellphone as a family of five snapped photos with Jesus.

As I stood in the hallway, I took a few photos and said hello to Vanessa Rousso. The Miami law student recently signed a deal with PokerStars as a sponsor. I bumped into Chris "Triple Draw" Fargis who was on the "alternate list" for today. He said he was staying at the Rio for the duration of the WSOP and that he enjoyed my Bonnaroo recaps. We both commented on the quality of female talent that has been flocking to the rails. A few poker sites hired models again to wear tight clothes and wander around the Rio.

Today felt like the first day back at school when you see everyone for the first time since the summer started. I didn't realize how many random people I knew like dealers, suits at Harrah's and floor people from last year. I also forgot how many pros I knew. Jean "the Prince" Gaspard walked in about forty minutes late to event #2. He knew it was going to be a clusterfuck and came late to avoid the rush.

Here's a few pics from today:



Amir and a fan


Flipchip playing in today's event

By the way, Full Tilt has a 50% reload bonus up to $300 through midnight at June 29th. Take advantage of it.

Before I go back to wandering the floor, I want to introduce and thank my new sponsor Paradise Poker. They were kind enough to buy the "leaderboard" ad space which covered my expenses and then some. Thanks to Jason at Paradise Poker for having faith in the Tao of Poker.

That's it for now.

* * * * *
You should be reading... Iggy's Guinness and Poker and Chris Fargis' blog Twenty-One Outs Twice.
posted by Pauly at 6/27/2006 04:20:00 PM | Permalink |

 
First Day at the WSOP: Buffets and Hookers 1, WSOP 0

"Your life is what other people's dreams are made of." - Betty

In true Hellmuthian fashion, I'm showing up late to the 2006 WSOP. I woke up today in Colorado after a weekend rumpus of music and high altitude partying with my buddy The Joker and his crew which included a smoking hot former Olympic female skier, a wedding singer, a sixth-grade science teacher, and a professional racquetball player. We drank too much and more fun that humans should be allowed. I also met fellow poker blogger Frankl. He gave me a ticket to Sunday's show and beer. Head over to the Tao of Pauly to see random pics, reviews, and setlists from the Widespread Panic shows at Red Rocks.

I do some of my best work when I'm strung out, hung over, and jacked up on pharmies. The words seem to flow smoother when I'm in that frame of mind. And after hanging out in the hippie enclave of Boulder for a weekend, my mind is warped after being drowned in patchouli and magic mushrooms. I'm now ready to tackle the toughest assignment of my life.

Well, almost ready.

I wanted to go to work today, but my flight from Denver did not arrive in Las Vegas until 4:20pm. That was too late for me to pick up my press credentials at the Rio. I drove home instead to do laundry and answer two hundred or so emails. Grubby and I planned on dinner at Green Valley Ranch, which is about a five minute drive from our apartment in Henderson. At the last second he suggested the Silverton Casino. He had an exclusive buffet for two coupon that was only eligible for Gold Members.

Going to a buffet without Grubby is like the difference between watching black & white TV and color. Or to be more sexually explicit... it's like the difference between having sex with a condom or without one. A buffet excursion with Grubby is like watching Jack Nicklaus play a round of 18 at Augusta National or witnessing Hemingway write The Old Man and The Sea.

Very few people can fully maximize a trip to a Las Vegas buffet and only a few people can make a visit to the buffet a true artform. Behold the greatness of the Poker Grub. He'll have a special announcement in a few days. And it's going to be a doozy.

I'm not staying at the Redneck Riviera this year. Thank God that I won't have to brush off the advances of $20 crack whores with poorly designed back tattoos. I don't have to worry if the homemade meth lab in the apartment upstairs is going to explode while I'm racing to meet a 5am PCT deadline. I have more posh surroundings this year in a gated apartment complex in Henderson that's complete with a pool where random strippers/hookers tan themselves in the late afternoons when the temperatures drop to the low 110s.

I have a car this year. Flipchip found me a rental for $100/week. I had a choice between a PT Cruiser, a minivan, or a convertible. I wouldn't be caught dead in a PT or a minivan, so the convertible was the easy choice. Grubby wanted to check out the car which I nicknamed "Bukow," which is short for one of my favorite writers Charles Bukowski.

We drove to Silverton with the top down. Luckily the temperature dropped to 109 degrees and we could enjoy the cool Las Vegas night. Silverton's buffet featured ten different flavors of gelato and I was in heaven. I always eat buffet desserts as my second course.


Photo courtesy of Flipchip
Since I skipped my first day of work to bust a buffet with Grubby and drive around town in a convertible funded by Fox Sports and Paradise Poker, I figured that I would make it a total blow-off day and head out to a strip club. I'm going to end this post quickly so we can have more time to grope cokehead lesbians. I'm gonna make up fake names and professions to the strippers I meet. Tonight my name will be Octavio and I'm a weatherman from Des Moines, Iowa. Grubby will be playing the role as Colby, a former Bible-salesman who now owns three car dealerships in Yuma, Arizona.

There was poker going on today at the Rio but I missed it. Flipchip was there and took some photos so stop by Las Vegas and Poker Blog to see check out some of the best WSOP photos. Event #1 started today which is the casino employees' event. Dick Gatewood from Sam's Town is playing. He helped me organize the first ever blogger's tournament in Las Vegas back in December of 2004.

The second day of the Tournament of Champions began. Unlike in past years, they decided to play this event before the WSOP instead of afterwards. The final table seat a few hours ago. Here's who made it:

TOC Final Table:
Andy Black
Daniel Bergsdorf
Darrell Dicken
Chris "Jesus" Ferguson
Mike Matusow
Daniel Negreanu
Kido Pham
Chris Reslock
Mike Sexton

It's good to see Atlantic City's Chris Reslock go far at the TOC. Mike Matusow made the final table again this year. He's the defending champion and took 9th in last years WSOP main event. Daniel Bergsdorf and Andy Black both made the final table of the WSOP main event with Matusow. Andy Black has become one of my favorite players after he dropped The Hammer at the WPT Borgata Winter Open back in January.

Last year in an article published on Fox Sports, I picked Daniel Negreanu to go all the way. He had an awful 2005 WSOP and made me look like I know absolutely nothing about poker. That might be true. I know very little about poker and I'm still shocked that I get to cover the WSOP. But I'm a good writer and I have the illusion of poker knowledge which is just as powerful.

There's a ton of pressure on me this year. Last year I was a nobody and if I failed, it never would have mattered. That's why I took the chances that I took. Lucky for me, those chances paid off. But this year, there are hundreds of thousands of frenetic poker fans expecting me to entertain them and inform them about the events at the largest poker tournament in the world. Those people believe in me along with a few sponsors that bought ads or the folks who hired me to write articles for them. If they are willing to put their faith in me, I have to step up and get the job done.

I'm not fooling myself. I know how difficult it's going to be cover this year's event with new restrictions placed upon the media. Plus there's gonna be several hundred other reps out there covering the same story. I have an edge. I roamed the halls of the Rio last year and aside from a few exceptions, I can describe the scene better than anyone else here.

The content and style of the Tao of Poker is constantly ripped off, imitated, sampled, and stolen. I am aware of the fucktards who steal my feed and throw up ads and banners trying to profit from my words. I'm aware of the bloggers who are desperate for attention and turn their blogs into Tao of Poker clones. I encourage you to visit their sites so you can see how pathetic they really are. Hey I don't think I can blame them. They wouldn't steal my vernacular and style unless it was good. They might be able to fool some of the folks, but those poseurs know they are two-bit hacks with no talent and zero imagination. If they had any, they wouldn't have to steal from my soul and pass it off as their own.

I'm not being paranoid or anything, but there's a reason why certain media outlets signed and paid out big bucks to get "exclusive coverage" rights to cover the 2006 WSOP. They are afraid of what I accomplished on the Tao of Poker last year. I took away their traffic which meant that they lost out on ad revenue. They don't want that to happen again from either me or one of their rivals. After all, these organizations aren't providing coverage because they love poker or want to do the poker community a great service. They're doing it for the money.

I'm not going to bullshit you... I'm getting paid more money than last year ... but I'm here in Las Vegas because I want to be here even though I have plenty of chances to do other things. I could be smoking hash in a coffee shop in Amsterdam watching the World Cup with die-hard fans. I could be following around my favorite bands this summer and dancing in fields under the stars with half-naked rolling hippie chicks. I could be holed up in an apartment in Paris writing the second draft of my novel Jack Tripper Stole My Dog. I could be back home in NYC eating burritos with Derek and The Rooster.

But I'm not. I'm in Las Vegas for a second year in a row covering the biggest event ever in the history of poker. I want to be at the Rio everyday and tell you what I see, hear, and smell. I'm not going to sugar-coat the poker coverage and tell you how awesome it is to be at the WSOP. I'm not going to write 2,500 words on how cool it is to see Gus Hansen and Jen Harman and Annie Duke play poker. They are degenerate gamblers just like you and me. They happen to be better at it than us but that doesn't make them rockstars and Gods among peasants.

Poker is a dark and ugly entity. The media has created an aura of nebulous sanctimony and the masses are flocking to it like it's the cure for the void that they have in their sad and empty lives. I should know. I fell for it too. For most of my life I was empty and sad. Poker was the light at the end of the tunnel. I bought the bullshit like everyone else. But unlike you, I got to see behind the scenes of the poker world for the last year. I peeked behind the curtain and saw the great and powerful Oz. And he's not great, nor powerful.

Poker is an old dirty whore. Poker is a $10 crack rock. Poker is an illusion and a momentary distraction from the harsh world that we live in.

Instead of asking ourselves the real questions and seeking out real answers, we're hiding from the repulsive truths of this world. There are twenty-one year old internet pros making six figures a year while kids their age are getting limbs blown off by roadside bombs in Baghdad. Tell me how important poker is to our troops overseas? A coinflip to them is not 7-7 vs. A-J. Their races and coinflips are life vs. death.

Alas, no one wants to hear about that morbid stuff. That's why more people watch American Idol than the nightly news. And Las Vegas is not a glamorous place. It's seedy and infested with crooks and criminals. Some of them wear suits and others wear gang colors. Just a few miles north of the Rio, some of the worst gang violence in this nation goes down on a nightly basis. But no one gives a rats ass if a couple of wasted gangbangers filled each other with lead last night in North Las Vegas. All the poker addicts care about are chipcounts or multiple pictures of Clonie Gowen so they can whack off too. I don't blame them. The world is a cruel mindfuck and I've tossed my salami to Clonie at least three times. Ok, maybe thirty-three times.

Sorry for the rant and political tirade. I spent too much time with hippies in Colorado this weekend passing around the peace pipe. Just like Chau Giang said as he rubbed his nipples in a counter-clockwise motion, "I love poker."

So if you want chip counts, hand histories, or winners photos of the 2006 WSOP then the Tao of Poker will be a major disappointment for you. But if you want to read about my encounters at the Hooker Bar, or the pros I pissed next to, or the strippers that Grubby and I paid $200 to eat a can of dog food, or how many boiled cheeseburgers made of kangaroo intestines that Otis ate in a 48 hour period... then this is the place to get those stories.

I'll share it all with you here. For free. You don't have to pay me a dime. And if you don't like my coverage, that's fine too. Don't read me. I don't waste my time reading shitty blogs or piss poor WSOP coverage that has already been cropping up like an unwanted case of the rickets.

I love to write and I know that's why you are coming here ten times a day to read my coverage. For that... I'm truly humbled, honored, and flattered.

Along with Flipchip, we outperformed other media outlets and shill sites that had teams of reporters working in shifts. In order for them to level the playing field, a couple of the big boys went out of their way to get me (and other media outlets) banned from providing "live updates" and photos. They wanted to control a few of the aspects that they can monetize the most... like winner's photos and live updates. I can't give you any of those. Oh well. I'm going to do everything possible to test the elasticity of the rules. If I don't get my press badge revoked, then I'm not doing my job as a gonzo journalist. I might have to lurk around the Rio in a disguise. I might just tell people I'm Dan Michalski from Pokerati.

Don't be fooled by the bogus coverage you see on other sites. I'm not going to try to deceive you and say I'm covering the WSOP from the floor today. I'm not. I'm sitting on Grubby's couch, scratching my balls, and listening to my new favorite band My Morning Jacket. There are dozens of other sites that will cut and paste stuff from my site or other places like Poker Wire and try to pass it off as their own work. You won't get that fluff here.

That's why I didn't lie and told you the truth. I skipped work today to go to a buffet and strip clubs with Grubby.

I kept rambling on and forgot that we have to go now. There's several bleached blondes with fake boobs that are waiting to gyrate their shaved tacos in my face as a Nelly song echoes loudly on the stereo system at The Rhino.

Anyway, stop back here as much as you can. There will be no pattern to my updates. They might happen at anytime. If you have this site blocked at work or at school, then feel free to set up a Bloglines account where you can view the Tao of Poker feed. And don't forget to check out Flipchip's WSOP photos.

One day down. Forty-eight more to go.

P.S. Happy birthday to BG and Change100.
posted by Pauly at 6/26/2006 11:56:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Birthday Truckin'

I'm sitting in the airport (again) ready to leave 110 degree Las Vegas for the cooler climates of Colorado for the weekend. I'm going to meet up with fellow poker blogger Frankl and my buddy The Joker for two Widespread Panic concerts at Red Rocks. I'll be back on Monday to head to work for the WSOP.


Flipchip took this photo on Thursday
In the meantime, feel free to read the entire recap of my Bonnaroo Experience which is almost 10K words and includes setlists, pics, and videos. The four part series and can be found on the Tao of Pauly or my music blog. The interview I did with Paris Hilton still gets me in stitches.

Bonnaroo Part I: Thursday Arrival
Bonnaroo Part II: Fanfuckingtastic Friday
Bonnaroo Part III: Superlicious Saturday
Bonnaroo Part IV: Sunday Finale
Bonnaroo video Part I
Bonnaroo video Part II
Bonnaroo 2006 downloads

* * * * *
Truckin' - June 2006, Vol. 5, Issue 6

My literary blogzine Truckin' turned four years old this month. Holy shit! I've never held a job or had a girlfriend that lasted more than 1.5 years so you can say that Truckin' has been one of the most meaningful relationship in my life. Joe Speaker and Daddy are featured in this issue along with three new writers inlcuding CC from Quest of a Closet Poker Player.

1. Late Night Donuts by Tenzin McGrupp
"You're ruining my life!" Nicky screamed at the old man in the Lexus who cut her off. "Fucking douche bag!"... More

2. Milk by Mella
It's been years now, since the accident, since the anniversary. But she still carries it. Her little scarlet letter, tucked in her purse; meaningless to everyone but our family. Occasionally, while she listens to her lists or while recording the ingredients for the salad she wants with dinner, people will ask her what she's doing... More

3. Letter Home by Mitchell B. Ivey
I thought I should take the time to finally get in touch with you, and let you know how I have been. The move was rough, going from one place I call home to a new place that is so vastly different... More

4. Roommate by Sigge S. Amdal
I could always hear her late at night, turning in bed or sleeping and sighing dreamfully, when I could not. I just knew she was a virgin... More

5. My First Lynching by Craig Cunningham
I was doing a girl named Sherry when I saw my first lynching. It was 1953 in Morrisville, Mississippi, and I was 26... More

6. Crop Dusting by Daddy
Her name was Lori, and I think she's from Brookville. I do know she ate Mexican food with her cousin before the party, and that ended up being the demise to my New Year's... More

7. Truffles by Joe Speaker
The place looked posh, sconces and scarlet lighting pointing toward a trim, demure blonde awaiting our cover charge. She smiled as she took our money... More

And yes, I wrote something up about my time in Hollyweird earlier this year. Thanks to all the writers and to everyone else for their support. The fifth year will be the best year yet. Stay tuned. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail if you know anyone who is interested in being added to the mailing list.

That's it for now. Next time I post something... it will be a 2006 WSOP update.
posted by Pauly at 6/24/2006 10:18:00 AM | Permalink |

 
On the Road... Again

"If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative." - Woody Allen

When it rains, it pours. On Monday, I signed up a sponsor which I'll reveal on Monday. Then a couple of hours ago, I got off the phone with a suit from Fox Sports. I'm about to sign a deal with them to write freelance articles on the 2006 WSOP for their online site. Flipchip will be providing photos for them too, just like last year. I'm excited to be working with them again this year. I'll be blogging here at the Tao of Poker everyday and I'll be posting tournament updates over at LasVegasVegas.com. I'll also be writing twice a week for Fox Sports along with daily recaps for them during the WSOP.

Over the last two years I've spent a too much of my life waiting around in airports. Luckily JetBlue at JFK has a wi-fi hotspot so I can catch up on email, play Party Poker, and throw up a last minute post. There's three hot scrawny model-types that might be strippers sitting nearby. The chances that one of them are sitting next to me are 5%. But if I stole one of their Louis Vuitton handbags, I could sell it and buy into a WSOP event. There's also a young Russian couple nearby screaming at each other. My Russian is so bad, that it sounds like they are speaking Ukranian. With my luck, I'll be wedged between the bickering couple on my flight instead of the leggy models/hookers/strippers.

I'm a people watcher. That's the writer in me who's always observing people. Since I grew up in New York City where there's several million people from all walks of life, people watching has always been a hobby. Sitting here at the airport, I noticed two types of travelers; those flying for business and those going for pleasure.

Last year, moving to the WSOP was all business for me. This year, I'm happy to say that I'm going for sheer pleasure. I'm shocked that I'm actually getting paid to do this. I'm sure that I can be do more socially and politically conscious things with my life like saving the spider monkeys and the rain forest in Costa Rica or joining the fight in Iraq helping "smoke those terrorists out of their caves."

But I'm not. I'm a hedonist and I'll be living with Grubby who wondered about the next time we'd be hitting up a strip club.

I'm going to spend most of my time over the next two months trying to double my bankroll against sunburnt tourists while drinking at the Hooker Bar and composing half-baked commentary and drivel on which degenerate gambler and social misfit woke up with a horseshoe up his ass to river a one outer to win a bracelet and take home more money on a $1,500 buy-in tournament that Doyle Brunson did for winning two WSOP championships.

* * * * *
I picked Italy over the Czechs today but the damn Yanks blew ass chunks versus Ghana. Not only did they get bounced from the World Cup, they also royally fucked me over in my pool.

On the legalized gambling front, I'm taking a bath on one of my stocks. Brasil Telecom has been cornholing me hard the past few weeks. I wish I shorted the stock when I bought in several months ago. Coulda. Woulda. Shoulda.

I opened up a new online trading account. Citibank offered me a free toaster and a Thai hooker to try out their services. A year ago I made enough money from writing and playing poker after the WSOP that I could finally start paying off my credit card debt. That was a day I thought would never come. Now I'm doing the wise thing and stashing money away instead of pissing it away at the tables. Diversification is the key to any fundamental investment plan.

I spent most of this afternoon investing the money that my grandma left me buying some stock, silver options, and oil futures. I'm gambling on international politics instead of donking off chips on Party Poker. After all we're just pawns in the global game of chess and I'll gamble on almost anything. Buying Warren Buffet recommended stocks seems a lot more +EV for me than tossing dice around at Casino Royale with Spaceman or dropping a grand on lap dance at The Rhino with Grubby.

Of course, I'll do both within a few days.

I get in to Vegas at Midnight and will be in town less than 36 hours before I board a flight to Colorado, where I'm going to fulfill a dream that I've had for almost a decade. I made a list of 100 Things I Want to Do Before I Die and one #81 was: See Widespread Panic play at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado. I'm going to Panic concerts on Saturday and Sunday.

The Top 3 are still...

1. Publish a book.
2. Sell a screenplay.
3. Kiss a girl in Paris on a rainy afternoon.

On the original list (written in 1996), I have about twenty-five things left to go. I told myself that if I get to do half of those things on the list, then I'd have enough material for one great book. There are two types of people in life: people who talk shit about doing things and people who actually do them. I might not get the top three finished, but I'm gonna die trying.

I fly back to Las Vegas on Monday afternoon. That's when Event #1 of the 2006 WSOP starts and the fun begins.
posted by Pauly at 6/22/2006 08:25:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Hump Day Pimp Day

Five days and counting until the 2006 WSOP! By the way, check out the revised 2006 WSOP Schedule.

I leave for Las Vegas tomorrow evening when I officially move in with Grubby in Henderson. I'm spending my last busy day in NYC trying to do laundry and pack for 10 weeks on the road.

Stay tuned for a special annoucnement. The Tao of Poker just signed up a new sponsor during the WSOP, which means that I won't be paying my own way! They are going to let me do what I want, so I have 100% creative control. Let's hope this is the start of a new partnership.

If you don't know, I'm in the middle of a crazy stint where I'll be flying around catching a couple fo Widespread Panic shows at Red Rocks in Colorado and in Hollyweird. Inside of thirteen days, I'm flying from:

Nashville to NYC
NYC to Las Vegas
Las Vegas to Denver
Denver to Las Vegas
Las Vegas to Long Beach
Long Beach back to Las Vegas

Six flights. Five cities. Four time zones. Four Widespread Panic shows. 5,500 air miles flown. That's what the end of June is looking like for me. I'll have to squeeze WSOP coverage in during the weekdays since I'm taking off the next two weekends to see concerts.

Of course in three weekends, we have the bi-annual blogger get together in Las Vegas which includes a NL tournament. "Gigli" arrived in the mail so if you come in last place... I have your booby prize!

On the personal writing front...

Bluff Magazine published the online version of the article I wrote for the June issue called Poker Blog: The Best of the Best.

Poker Player Newspaper published my recent column Celebrity Endorsements.

Stop by the Tao of Pauly to read my trip report... Bonnaroo Part I. I'll post Part II later today. For Bonnaroo setlists, head over to my music blog.

On Wednesdays, Mookie holds a tourney on Poker Stars at 10pm. If I have the time, I'm going to play again this week. Stop by Mookie's site for more details and the password.

I jumped back into the fishy waters at Party Poker last night after a ten day hiatus away from the virtual felt. Although my game was shaky after a four day bender, I managed to hit and run for two sessions playing Limit Hold'em. When I'm in Vegas, I'm going to play a ton of live poker... at least five days a week to work on my middle stakes Limit game at 10-20 and above. I'm also going to grind out the ocassional low-limit NL cash game looking to double up against tourists with hands like 10-8o.

Now go stop by Wicked Chops Poker and read their blogfiles on Jen Leo, which includes a pic of us drinking heavily during the Full Tilt party at the WSOP last year.

Five more days until the 2006 WSOP...
posted by Pauly at 6/21/2006 09:37:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Bonnaroo Videos

Bonnaroo Part 1
Bonnaroo Part 2
By the way, these videos are NSFW. Because these are so big, the videos play faster than it streams. You might have to pause the video from time to time to allow it to catch up. If you pause the video at the start and let it load up for a few minutes, you should be able to see it all without having to pause it.

Part 1 is 10 minutes and features celebrity head interviews, Beck's puppet show, and clips from random bands such as Tom Petty, Beck, Radiohead, the Super Jam, and the glowstick war during My Morning Jacket

Part 2 is 7 minutes and also features more celebrity interviews, the Bonnaroo Poker Open, and clips from random acts such as Oysterhead, Ramble Dove, and Matisyahu.

I spent almost 10 hours at the Nashville airport yesterday. I could not get on an earlier flight and my flight ended up delayed by 90 minutes. I took some time to splice a video together. It was too big, so I broke it down into two parts. When I have time, I'll cut it down into four parts for easier viewing. For now... enjoy the two videos of Bonnaroo.
posted by Pauly at 6/20/2006 04:20:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Almost Home: Bonnaroo Update

I'm sitting at the bar in Nashville Airport waiting for my plane to take me back to NYC as the World Cup game is on the boob tube. I survived the Bonnaroo music festival which was attended by 80,000 music lovers from all over the world. I spent four straight days and late nights partying with hard-core hippies, hipsters, and indie rock kids. I didn't get arrested and magically avoided a trip to the ER. I'm gonna leave Tennessee with thousands of warm memories, hundreds of pictures, a couple of cool videos, and several stories. I will be posting photos and updates over at the Tao of Pauly and on my music blog.

Over the past four days, I caught some of my favorite bands including: I-Nine, the Wood Brothers, The Motet, Electric Eel Shock, Ben Folds, Ramble Dove (country band featuring Mike Gordon from Phish), Oysterhead (Trey Anastasio from Phish on guitar, Stewart Copeland from The Police on drums, and Les Claypool of Primus on bass), Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers with special guest Stevie Nicks, My Morning Jacket, Common, the Disco Biscuits, Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah, Gomez, Beck, Radiohead, the Super Jam featuring GRAB (Trey & Mike from Phish with the Benevento/Russo Duo), The Streets, Matisyahu, Sonic Youth, moe., and Phil Lesh & Friends featuring John Scofield.

All that music cost $185. That's a bargain. The highlights were My Morning Jacket, Radiohead, Beck, and the Super Jam featuring Trey & Mike from Phish. And yes... My Morning Jacket is my new favorite band. Here's a clip of MMJ's Bonnaroo performance courtesy of StereoGum.

I went to Bonnaroo with an awesome crew that featured Change100, The Joker, Molly, BTreoch, and Professional Keno Player Neil Fontenot. We all got along and partied it up hard. We lost Mr. Fontenot for two days as he wandered around Bonnaroo looking for some gambling action. He took over $1K off of the "Three-card Monte" tables in the campgrounds. Yes, he crushed that game. He was also betting $50 a pop on Q-Bert in the arcade tent, which featured tons of arcade classics from when I was a kid. Mr. Fontenot beat several challengers who couldn't pay in cash. He told me that he accepted "kind trades" from hippies in addition to winning five glass pipes, a bag of mushrooms, and a crystal.

We played some poker too. There were four of us for the first annual Bonnaroo Poker Classic. We sat in the field in front of the main stage and played while we waited for the Phil Lesh & Friends show to start. I busted out first on the 3rd hand when my aces got cracked!


Aces cracked at Bonnaroo
Change100 raised my BB with SMTL. The Joker called with Q-J and I smooth called with A-A. The flop was J-8-3. The Joker and I both checked into Change100, who moved all in. The Joker and I both quickly called. I thought I was way ahead and was going to triple up. The Joker turned a Queen to take the lead. The river was no help. I was busted and Change100 got crippled.

The tourney was a quick one. The Joker took it down in 12 hands and is the current Bonnaroo Poker Champion.


The Joker: Bonnaroo Champion
Earlier in the week, I played a couple of tournaments at Spaceman's house. Change100 won both. She beat Spaceman and Mrs. Spaceman heads up both nights.

By the way... congrats to Glyph, who made the final table and won a seat in a $1,500 WSOP event. I was at Bonnaroo at the time and could not play. I sat out and ended up coming in 1083rd place! Thanks again to Poker Stars for setting the freeroll up.

Stop by my other blogs over the next few days for stories, setlists, and photos. I'm gonna try to splice together a video of the weekend.

I move to Las Vegas on Thursday for the WSOP. I have to sober up, do laundry, pack, and write a few reviews of Bonnaroo before I go. I can't wait for the WSOP...
posted by Pauly at 6/19/2006 04:20:00 PM | Permalink |

 
2005 World Series of Poker Recap


2005 WSOP Champion Joe Hachem
Photo courtesy of Flipchip
I'm moving back to Las Vegas in ten days so I can cover the 2006 WSOP here at the Tao of Poker. It seemed like just yesterday I was stuck in the corner of Benny's Bullpen as I watched Joe Hachem win $7.5 million and become the new WSOP Champion. But almost a year has passed.

I will be taking the next several days off while I'm on holiday in Tennesse to visit Spaceman and Mrs. Spaceman. Then later in the week, I'm attending the Bonnaroo music festival featuring some of my favorite bands. I assembled a kick ass crew to come along with me to party it up during a four day musical bender, which includes my buddy the Joker, Change100, Molly, and professional Keno player Neil Fontenot. I'll be posting pictures, updates, and reviews on the Tao of Pauly and my group music blog.

In the meantime, take the time to go back and re-read my 2005 WSOP coverage on the Tao of Poker and other sites.

WSOP Quick Links:

2006 WSOP Schedule
Pauly's 2006 WSOP Preview
2006 WSOP Odds
Flipchip's 2005 WSOP Photos
2005 WSOP Tournament Results
2005 Tao of Poker WSOP June Archives
2005 Tao of Poker WSOP July Archives

To start off, "First Impressions" is one of my favorite pieces from last year. I wrote this for Fox Sports and it appeared on their website on June 19th.

2005 World Series of Poker: First Impressions

Every day at high noon, a young and eager gunslinger arrives into town ready to take down the established grizzled locals. This is not a plot out of an old John Ford western movie, instead it's simply a recap of the daily events at the 2005 World Series of Poker. Millions of dollars are on the line with every turn of the card. Legends are being made every few hours, while souls and dreams are being crushed in the process.

Indeed, the first two weeks of the 2005 World Series of Poker have been complete insanity. Players, tourists, and media types from all over the world have converged on the Rio Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada to witness the largest and most prestigious poker tournament in the world. For six weeks the Rio is poker's version of Mecca. There are 45 major tournaments being held with the infamous $10,000 buy-in No Limit main event scheduled to start on July 7th. The fast-paced gambling action will be non-stop at the Rio and running twenty-four hours a day with cash games featuring celebrities, Las Vegas sharks, and satellites filled with plenty of "dead money" players from all walks of life.

With every turn of the card, there is the potential that a brand new WSOP winner will be crowned. The prize pools at this year's WSOP are the highest they have ever been at over $20 million. And that's just for the first fifteen events. The main event alone will have a prize pool of over $60 million. More players are participating in every event than in previous years. We're in the middle of the "poker boom" and it appears that everyone is trying to get in on the orgiastic frenzy. The crowds of spectators are flocking to the Rio in huge groups to watch their favorite professional poker players in action. They are gawking on the rail, pestering pros for their autographs, and spending ungodly sums of money on various WSOP paraphernalia.

I get goose bumps every time I walk into the poker room here at the Rio. It's been two weeks already and that feeling has not worn off. A wave of energy hits me right in the face as soon as I take one step inside. The sight of this operation is overwhelming. The room is bigger than a football field and resembles an airplane hangar more than anything else. There are hundreds of tables in the room, illuminated by some of the brightest lights I have ever seen. The tables are filled with players from all over the world. Some are listening to their favorite hipster bands on iPods while others are sporting sunglasses to hide their timid eyes. A few online amateurs have that "deer caught in the headlights" look, after they find themselves sitting across from guys nicknamed Texas Dolly, Devilfish, Men the Master, and Minneapolis Jim.

You can hear the sound of chips clattering from the corridor leading up to the poker room. The distinct sound began two weeks ago and will not stop until a new WSOP Champion is declared. Over the loudspeaker, a young lady's voice tells players when their seat to a specific cash game is available. Cocktail waitresses are fighting for position to deliver imported beers, water, and Red Bulls to the players, while chip runners are sprinting from the cage to the cash game tables. You can hear players verbally display their reactions when they get sucked out on the river or survive a desperate all in attempt with a short stack. Floor managers are refereeing disputes between players, often giving them a ten minute penalty for unruly behavior and excessive usage of profanity. In media row, writers from various news organizations are exchanging gossip and chip counts of different players. In the hallways and in the bathrooms you can overhear players recant their bad beat stories and other tales of how they lost all of their chips.

Over at the cash games tables, pros are pulling out wads of $100 bills to take on other big named pros, fish with deep pockets, and celebrities who dropped by the Rio to see if they could hang with the big dogs. One late night, I spotted Phil Laak, Clonie Gowen, Anontio Esfandiari, and Jennifer Tilly playing in a $25/$50 No Limit cash game. There must have been close to $100,000 on that table in a game that lasted until sunrise.

On the far end of the poker room is where the dreamers hang out. That's were the satellite area is located. For as little as $50, you can try to earn your $10,000 seat in the main event by winning a series of smaller buy-in single table tournaments. Doctors from Long Island, accountants from South Carolina, college drop outs from California, and other varieties of "dead money" have been fighting each other around the clock, in hopes of turning their limited bankrolls into a chance at becoming the first $10 million winner at the World Series of Poker.

If the first two weeks of action are any indication of what is to come over the next four weeks, then this year's World Series of Poker is going to be the most epic gambling event of all time. Don't blink or turn away, because you might miss history.

* * * * *
Before the 2005 WSOP started, Derek and I headed to Vegas for the second ever bloggers event in early June. We shared a suite at the Plaza with AlCantHang and his lovely wife Eva. I posted some random updates and pictures. We did a lot of drinking and a lot of partying and played a ton of random poker including late night SNGs in the suite while Drizz played Full Tilt and shouted obscenities at my laptop.

I held back just a little because I knew I had to work the WSOP for six straight weeks. I didn't stay up as late as I would have liked and missed out on a lot of hijinks. I got to meet the Fat Guy and Chris Halverson for the first time and that made the trip for me. Bill Rini won the blogger's tournament at the Aladdin. He beat CJ heads up. The Poker Geek dropped the Hammer on the first hand of the tournament at my table. I sat next to Tanya and we became friends. I also cracked Halverson's K-K with my Big Slick. Chad busted me when my 10-10 lost to his 9-9. AlCantHang hosted a party at La Salsa and we also headed to the Rio to sweat the bloggers who won seats into the WSOP $1500 NL event which included Joe Speaker, Russ Fox, Wes, and Bobby Bracelet.

On the morning of the first day of work, Flipchip took me over to the Redneck Riviera where I was going to be living. It looked nice on the outside, but the residents would end up becoming the biggest story of my stint in Las Vegas. They became so much more popular than the WSOP that I even considered naming my book: The Redneck Riviera.

"Didn't they catch the Ohio highway serial sniper at the Redneck Riviera in Las Vegas?" I asked Flipchip.

"Possibly. But at least they caught him. He could have still been living here," he joked.

Here's how I described the Redneck Riviera in my Las Vegas book:

I lived on the ground floor of Building D, which was the abbreviation for Demented. I found out the hard way that a white trash family lived next door. It seemed like they had 18 people living in a one bedroom suite. The same size apartment I lived in. I passed out around 7 A.M. every morning. At 11 A.M. it was "Redneck Family Hour" which came complete with drunken arguments, a slap fight, and no less than a dozen malnourished kids running rampant in front of my window. A rowdy a group of them were hootin' and hollerin' like they re-enacted the Battle of Antietam in the parking lot. It was extremely frustrating trying to fall back asleep. I requested a new apartment, but they put me on the waiting list. The entire place was booked solid and the only rooms that were available had shotty A/C. The lack of sleep drove me closer towards the brink of insanity and directly hurt my writing skills. My neighbors weren't helping.

Grubby was right... locals don't get any sleep in Vegas either. Either a drug dealer or hooker lived on the other side of me. I wondered if I could get a package deal? Every twenty minutes or so I could hear a knock on their door. That went on at all hours. At least, the free HBO and ESPNews drowned out the moans and groans from the portly johns and their strung out hookers.

Yeah, my apartment complex was in a flavorful place. I had a freaky feeling that someone's homemade crystal meth lab in the adjacent building unit is going to blow up and all my WSOP notes will be destroyed.

I headed to the Rio for my first day of work with Flipchip and he showed me the ropes. I set up my laptop in media row and introduced myself to a small group of people who ended up becoming my friends. Otis wasn't supposed to arrive for a few weeks and I knew almost nobody. I met Amy Calistri who was a fan of my blog and she introdcued me to Lou Krieger. I was so nervous that I kept calling him "Sir." Lou would end up becoming a loyal reader of the Tao and ended up recomending me for a few freelance assignments.

I also met BJ from CardPlayer and Jen & Heather from Poker Wire. We'd end up sitting in media row everyday for six weeks together while Andy Bloch stopped by a lot.

I also finally met the infamous Jay Greenspan and Nolan Dalla. Not to mention Dan from Pokerati who ended becoming one of my close buddies during the WSOP. And of course Foiled Coup was around snapping photos of hot chicks like Liz Lieu and hitting on all the skanky trade show girls that worked various booths in the hallways when he wasn't eating cheese and crackers with me in the Full Tilt hospitality suite.

I met Jen Leo, John & Earl from Poker News along with Otis' crew at Poker Stars, Brits like Mad and Howard. I could never forget meeting the Irish guys Lucky Blind Lacey and Tom Murphy. Those dudes could drink.

Flipchip ended up taking the best 2005 WSOP photos around. Take a peek.

I ended up posting my first ever live blog from the WSOP. The rest was history. I had no idea what I was going to do. I was getting paid to write daily recaps for the Poker Prof's blog at Las Vegas and Poker along with recaps for Poker Player Newspaper and Fox Sports. The live blogging started out of a way for me to take notes on the daily events as they happened. The Poker Prof encouraged me to go ahead and do it. The first post had origins of the now infamous "Last 5 Pros I Took a Piss Next To" when I spotted Scotty Nguyen in the bathroom fixing his hair.

I also blogged my first final table, the event that E-Fro ended up winning, becoming the younest ever bracelet winner. I also ended up getting in the background shots of ESPN's taping of the final table.

I also taped weekly spots with Sean for Card Club's Lord Admiral podcast. I did episode 29, episode 30, episode 31, episode 32, episode 33, episode 34, and episode 35.

I witnessed bracelet wins by Erik Seidel, TJ Cloutier, Josh Arieh, Mark Seif (twice), Barry Greenstien, Todd Brunson, Johnny Fuckin' Chan, Phil Ivey, and Doyle Brunson. Here are the live blogged final tables:

Event #5 Omaha Hi/Lo
Event #6 NL Shorthanded
Event #7 $1K NL w/ Rebuys and Event #8 $1500 Seven-card Stud
Event #9 $2K NL
Event #11 PL Hold'em
Event #12 PLO w/ Rebuys
Event #13 $5K NL
Event #15 Limit Shootout
Event #16 NL Shootout
Event #17 Limit Hold'em
Event #19 PLO
Event #21 Omaha 8
Event #22 $1500 NL
Event #23 $5K Seven-card Stud
Event #25 PL Hold'em
Event #26 Ladies NL
Event #27 PLO w/ Rebuys
Event #28 $5K Limit
Event #31 $5K Short-handed
Event #32 $5K Omaha8
Event #34 Senior's NL

The craziest single moment at the WSOP in June was the night Johnny Fuckin Chan won his 10th bracelet. There were 2 final tables and the Ladies Event going on. Four tourneys in all and I covered every single one. That was the hardest night at the WSOP and most memorable. I sat in the front row and watched Chan take down the Unabomber heads up to win bracelet #10. That was like being in Yankee Stadium the day Roger Maris hit #61.

The very next night, Jen Tilly won the ladies event. My story on Fox Sports got picked up by a ton of media outlets.

A few days later Doyle Brunson won his 10th bracelet after he beat out his buddy Minh Ly.

I also played in my first ever WSOP event. I sold pieces of myself on the Tao and sold out quickly! Thanks to everyone who bought shares including: Maudie, Al CantHang, Tanya, Derek, Briana, Otis, Senor, Iggy, Joaquin, Human Head, Obie, Joe Speaker, Wil, Spaceman, Sean & Brent from Lord Admiral Radio, Chad, Halverson, Gracie, April H., and Poker Prof & Flipchip. They all would have gotten a cut of my winnings if I made the money.

Spaceman called me to tell me one night that Charlie Tuttle was very ill and in the hospital. His favorite player was Marcel Luske and he wanted to know if we could get Marcel to call Charlie or something. Marcel did so and sung to Charlie in a ten minute phonecall. What Marcel started ended up becoming the backstory to the next couple of days as different pros rallied behind Charlie. Felicia helped get plenty of pros involved and Max Pescatori sent Charlie a care package along with other pros like John Juanda and Barry Greenstien who called Charlie.

Barry Greenstien went out and won a WSOP event. He dedicated it to Charlie in a tearful brief speech after he won. I wrote it up for Poker Player. Afterwards I broke down and cried in the hallway with Otis doing his best to console me. Charlie died the day after he heard the news. That was the same day I was supposed to play in my WSOP event #22. The last thing I wanted to do was play poker. But I did anyway and I was busted on a bad beat when A-K lost to A-10.

My thougths drifted mostly to Charlie's family and to Spaceman and Mrs. Spaceman and all of their friends. Charlie Tuttle touched so many lives at the WSOP. Charlie and his death somehow became a connection and bridged a friendship between Barry Greenstien and myself. The experience was too painful to talk about and we've only discussed it once since. We both feel blessed that being a part of Charlie's last days was a sacred reminder that life is short and precious and that you really need to live each day to the fullest.

I was tired, exhausted, and drained by the end of June. But the spirit of Charlie inspired me the remainder of the WSOP. He got me through some tough days and nights.

Here's a story I wrote that appeared on Fox Sports and on the cover of Poker Player Newspaper called A Guy Named Charlie:

A Guy Named Charlie

"It's very easy to do a good deed." - Barry Greenstein
Some of you don't know about a guy named Charlie Tuttle. He got dealt a bad hand in life and he's been battling cancer. When the World Series of Poker began, his health took a turn for the worse. His best friend Jason Spaceman wondered if the Poker Prof and myself could find away to cheer Charlie up. His favorite player is Marcel Luske and some of you already know the amazing story how Marcel borrowed my cell phone to call Charlie in the ICU. He even sung to him and that made Charlie laugh for the first time in a very long time.

Our friend Felicia took it upon herself to find as many pros and ask them to do something to help lift Charlie's spirits. Max Pescatori, Barry Greenstein, and John Juanda all took time out of their busy schedules to call Charlie. Barry even said he would send Charlie a copy of his new book. Max sent Charlie a care package and got some of his friends like Jen Harman and Doyle Brunson involved. In the last few days, Charlie's breathing problems persisted and he was unable to physically talk on the phone. He has internet access now, so I know he's reading this.

Charlie, in one of the most amazing moments I have ever witnessed in poker, Barry Greenstein said he was going to win a WSOP event for you. Then he went out and did it.

During one of the breaks at the final table of Event #19 $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha, I walked over to Barry Greenstein and thanked him for calling Charlie. His gesture really meant a lot to Charlie, his family and friends, and to a lot of people in the poker community, both players, bloggers, and readers alike. Barry said to me, "It's easy to do a good deed."

He understood how the poker boom had made poker pros instant celebrities and that a simple phone call was the least he could do. Before the break was over he told me that he was going to dedicate the victory to Charlie. At that point, I rooted for Barry harder than I ever pulled for any other player before.

In order to get in the position to win this event for Charlie, Barry had to outlast a field of 291 players including a former World Champion in Chris "Jesus" Ferguson. The final table started an hour later than originally scheduled. Apparently, there was a computer error in the payout structure and some of the players who cashed yesterday got more than they should have. As soon as the error had been corrected, play began.

Here's the final table players and chip counts:

Seat 1: Chris "Jesus" Ferguson (Pacific Palisades, CA) $16K
Seat 2: Sam Silverman (Las Vegas, NV) $39.5K
Seat 3: Paul Vinci (Shell Beach, CA) $54K
Seat 4: Paul Maxfield (Stroke-On-Trent, England) $67K
Seat 5: Barry Greenstein (RPV, CA) $92K
Seat 6: Tim Martz (Butte, MT) $72.5K
Seat 7: Toto Leonidas (Los Angeles, CA) $45K
Seat 8: Eric "Blue" Bloore (North Hollywood, CA) $16K
Seat 9: Chris Lindenmayer (Pickerington, OH) $35.5K

Here are some interesting facts about the final table players... Chris Ferguson was playing in his second final table at this year's WSOP. He has five bracelets and is looking for number six. Sam Silverman is a 25 year old poker player. He had been playing in the WSOP since 2003. Paul Vinci is a restaurant owner and this is his first final table. Paul Maxfield is a CEO of a company in England. He has six cashes and made two final tables in his WSOP career. Barry Greenstein is known as the "Robin Hood" of poker. He has a victory on the WPT and also won one WSOP bracelet. Tim Martz is a poker room operator from Montana. This is his first final table. Toto Leonidas is at his second final table this year. Eric "Blue" Bloore is playing in just his second WSOP event. Chris Lindenmayer is an x-ray technician.

Eric "Blue" Bloore was the first player eliminated. Barry Greenstein raised preflop to $6K. Blue reraised all in for 10k more. Barry called with As-5s-2s-2h. Eric Bloore had Ac-Kc-10h-9h. The board read Kh-6c-3s-6s-2c and Barry caught a full boat on the river. Eric " Blue" Bloore finished in 9th place. He won $8,030.

Sam Silverman was next to get eliminated. Silverman moved all in on the flop of 2d-8c-8h when he flopped trips with 5s-6c-7d-8d. Paul Vinci showed 7s-7c-As-Ad. Silverman lost the lead when an ace spiked on the turn. His boat was good enough to win. Sam Silverman won $12,045 for 8th place.

Chris "Jesus" Ferguson was knocked out in 7th place by Chris Lindenmayer. Jesus missed his flush draw and Lindenmayer flopped two pair. Jesus won $16,065 for his efforts.

In the battle of the Paul's... Paul Maxfield was knocked out in 6th place by Paul Vinci. Maxfield moved all in preflop with As-Ks-10d-6d. Maxfield was called by Vinci's Ac-Qd-3d-7c. Maxfield flopped a pair but Vinci caught running clubs to spike the nut flush on the river. Paul Maxfield won $20,080 for 6th place.

Toto Leonidas went on a mini rush. He caught several cards on the river to double up a couple of times, including one pot against Barry Greenstein. Toto knocked out Tim Martz in 5th place. Marz won $24,095.

In one of the biggest pots since the final table began, Barry Greenstein doubled up. On a flop of 4d-2d-7c, Barry Greenstein moved all in with a pair a kings and a flush draw. He had Kx-Kd-Td-4x. Toto Leonidas called with top pair and a straight draw. Barry caught a diamond on the turn and doubled up against Toto. He was close to being eliminated, but hung on. That was a crucial hand because he went on a run right after that.

Barry Greenstein took down another huge pot from Toto. The flop was Js-9d-4s, Greenstein bet $15K and Toto called. The turn was the 3d and Greenstein checked. Toto bet the pot about $54K and Greenstein moved all in with Kc-Jd-Jh-6c. Toto called with Kd-Qd-Qs-3c. He had a flush and a gutshot draw. He missed both on the river. Greenstein's flopped a set of Jacks was good enough to win. Toto Leonidas was eliminated in 4th and he won $28,110. Barry moved into the chip lead.

Chris Lindenmayer was knocked out in 3rd place by Paul Vinci. Both players checked on the flop of Kd-Qs-5s. Lindenmayer bet $26K on the turn when the 6c hit. Paul Vinci called. The river card paired the board with the Kh. Lindenmayer bet $20K, Vinci raised, and Lindenmayer moved all in. Lindenmayer showed Qd-Qh-7s-4d for a full house Queens full of Kings. Paul Vinci showed Kc-6s-Ac-9c and a bigger boat with Kings full of Sixes to win the pot. Chris Lindenmayer was knocked out and he won $36,140 for his efforts.

We've reached heads up play and the chip counts were about even.

On the 16th hand of heads up play, Barry won a huge pot when he caught a Wheel straight on the river. Barry held a $400K to $43K chip lead. A few hands later, Barry won his second bracelet. He won $128,505, all of which goes to charity. Paul Vinci played great and he took second place and won $70,680.

I wish I could say that I was paying attention to the hand that Barry beat Paul Vinci with. I was distracted because all I could think about was Charlie and Spaceman. A few moments after he won, Barry spoke to the audience and officially dedicated his victory to Charlie.

"This one is for Charlie," Barry said as a round of applause filled the room.

Barry couldn't say much more because he was also playing in another WSOP event, the Pot-Limit Hold'em tournament, in the far corner of the poker room. On the way to his table, he barely spoke about his win to the media because he was all choked up. Barry is one of the best poker players in the world and he always has his feelings in check at the table. For a brief moment though, he was overwhelmed with emotion and exposed his vulnerable side. I think a lot of us involved were a little teary eyed.

I had to excuse myself and go into the hallway because I was about to cry. At that moment, the events at the World Series of Poker seemed meaningless compared to the battle that Charlie was fighting. Situations like this make you reassess what's really important in life. Las Vegas is a city built on greed. Poker is a game that often attracts some of the lowest forms of life. However, in the past two weeks, there have been a small group of professional poker players who have earned my respect and admiration. Amidst all the darkness and debauchery, I have caught a few glimpses of the bright side of humanity. The hearts of some of the biggest sharks in Las Vegas are filled with compassion.

Tonight was a special night at the World Series of Poker and Barry Greenstien made sure that we would all never forget a guy named Charlie Tuttle.

* * * * *
BG set up the Charlie Tuttle Memorial Tournament on Poker Stars which was won by SarahBellum.

I interviewed Clonie Gowen and ask her what she had on her iPod. I also asked Phil Hellmuth what was on his iPod as well.

I wrote about one awful day at the Redneck Riveria.

CJ was cool and hosted a few clips of Otis and me from the WSOP.

Flipchip snapped the photo on the right of us in media row featuring (from left to right): Otis, Dan from Pokerati (standing), Pauly, BJ, and Poker Wire Heather.

The month ended with me in the middle of the Charlie Tuttle story and getting to play in my first ever WSOP event. Within a few weeks I went from a nobody at the WSOP to a somebody. The traffic began to pick up on my blog and I was getting noticed by fans and readers for the first time. I befriended more media reps and pros and the ESPN crew.

By the fourth week I knew everyone working at the Rio convention area. Flipchip and I spent 12-16 hours there a day sometimes more, while the Poker Prof was hidden away in a bunker in a secret location in the Nevada desert doing computer geek stuff. I'd get only an hour off every day and that's when Otis and I would hit the Hooker Bar and drink non-stop while playing video poker. The rest of the time I was writing or trying to sleep through all the craziness at the Redneck Riveria.

I had very little time to play poker aside from a satellite and the WSOP event. I played several $100 MTTs on Party Poker to prep for the WSOP. The only poker I played was online via dial up at the Reneck Riveria on nights that I couldn't sleep.

July started with me having a mental breakdown a few days before the WSOP main event. The Redneck Riviera and the intense Nevada summer heat were making me crazy. The bad food. The lack of sleep. The depression. The deadlines. The bad beat stories. The misery. It was all fucking with my head and I lost my shit more than once in July.

I saw Paul McKinney become the oldest person to ever win a WSOP bracelet.

I went to the Full Tilt party held at La Bete in the Wynn. The dress code was LA Chic. I had no idea what that meant. I went with Shirley and I hung out with a ton of media folks including a bunch of bloggers. I ended up closing out the bar drinking past last call with Daniel Negreanu, the Poker Prof, and two Irish Guys.

On the same day that AlCantHang came out to surprise me and Otis, I met Wil Wheaton for the first time and we hung out and bullshitted for a while. He was supposed to play in the main event in less than 24 hours from the time we met. I showed him the empty table he would end up sitting at. It was the same day as the WSOP Media/Celebrity event.

I cashed in my first WSOP event and made my first WSOP final table. I also cracked Shannon Elizabeth's A-A with JJ. I was Otis' table to start and I got A-A in back to back hands. I busted him and build up a huge chip lead. I was also seated next to Lou Krieger at some point.

During the main event, I met DoubleAs for the first time. He would end up cashing in his first and only WSOP event.

The WSOP $10K main event started. The last two days were held in Benny's Bullpen at the Horseshoe. Here are my live blogging updates:

Day 1A
Day 1B
Day 1C
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7 - The Final Table

Be sure to take a peek at the Poker Prof's hard work in his 2005 WSOP tournament results page. And look at Flipchip's 2005 WSOP photo gallery.

Everyone knows that Joe Hachem from Australia won the 2005 WSOP main event. He took home $7.5 million and I got to experience the 2005 WSOP from nearly the start to the finish. It was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. I might cover WSOP events in the future, but it's never quite the same as your first one. I have the Poker Prof to thank for the entire thing. He said we were going to pull it off... and with Flipchip's help... we did.

The Poker Prof told me that I was the single most read writer at the WSOP, even more so than Nolan Dalla. He estimated that more than one million people read something of mine during the 2005 WSOP either on the Tao of Poker, Poker Player Newspaper, Fox Sports, MSN, and some of the other sites that I write for. I was blown away by that number and still refuse to believe that was possible. He broke it down by the numbers and although it adds up, it's still a disturbing number. If I knew that then... I would have freaked out and choked. As is, despite some problems and rough patches, I came out of the WSOP as a legitimate poker tournament reporter. Some of that was due to Felicia's suggestions along with Otis' help, Flipchip's Obi-wan like guidance, and Poker Prof's persistent belief in me.

Wil gave me some great advice and insisted that I take my dinner breaks for "me" time. I ended up rushing off to the Hooker Bar to drink with Otis. For a while it was our favorite time of the day. We'd drink sometimes for free and made sure we didn't talk about poker. We discussed anything except poker. That was our only rule. For an hour everyday we escaped the insanity of the WSOP. We didn't have deadlines or readers eagerly awaiting updates. We were just two dudes drinking away our troubles at a bar in Las Vegas, checking out the talent and swapping a few stories in the process. That was just one of the many highlights of the WSOP.

* * * * *
Gallery of Champions

I snapped the following pictures moments after these champions won their event. My favorite is Johnny Chan winner's photo. They all have the distinction of being in my Gallery of Champions. You can click on the individual photos to get an enlarged view. Enjoy.


Erik Seidel
2005 WSOP $2K NL Champion


Josh Arieh
2005 WSOP $2K PLO Champion


TJ Cloutier
2005 WSOP $5K NL Champion


Isaac Glazan
2005 WSOP $2,500 Shorthanded NL Champion


"The Mighty" Quinn Do
2005 WSOP $2,500 Limit champion


Bary Greenstien
2005 WSOP $1,500 PLO Champion


Mark Seif: Two time bracelet winner
2005 WSOP $1,500 Limit Shootout Champion
2005 WSOP $1,500 NL CHampion


Phil Ivey
2005 WSOP $5K PLO champion


Johnny Chan wins bracelet #10
2005 WSOP $2,500 Pot-Limit Hold'em Champion


Todd Brunson
2005 WSOP $2,500 Omaha 8 Champion


Doyle Brunson wins #10
2005 WSOP $5K NL Shorthanded Champion


Jen Tilly
2005 WSOP Ladies Champion


Paul McKinney
2005 WSOP Senior's Champion


Joe Hachem
2005 WSOP $10K NL main event Champion


Bobby Bracelet
2005 Saturdays with Dr. Pauly Champion
* * * * *
After all that hard work during the WSOP, my eforts were recognized. The Tao of Poker was mentioned in an article in the Online Journalism Review called Gonzo poker bloggers bring World Series to life in real time. Here's a bit:

At the 2005 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, which wrapped up last week, the blogging star was "Dr. Pauly", a struggling screenwriter and novelist who became a poker fanatic... more

I move to Las Vegas in 10 days and the WSOP begins in two weeks. This will be the place to get your 2006 WSOP fix. In the meantime, feel free to read my articles on 2006 WSOP Odds and the 2006 WSOP Preview.

See you at the Rio in two weeks!
posted by Pauly at 6/12/2006 08:17:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Born to Gamble Part VI: Revival

I first met Haley at one of those pretentious Upper East Side cocktail parties that Woody Allen makes fun of in his films, where they serve fancy hors d'oeuvres like curry quail eggs with organic squash and try to impress their guests with overpriced French Bordeaux wine that gets you as drunk as a bottle that's 1/4 the price. During our first conversation, I asked Haley one of the three standard questions people in New York ask each other.

"Where do you live?"

"73rd and Amsterdam," she said as I stared at her breasts.

"Ah, right around the corner from Player's Club."

"Huh, what's that?"

"Oh, it's an um.... an underground poker room that I play at. Sometimes."

"Ewww! Poker?" as she rolled her eyes. "Like an illegal casino with mobsters and extras from The Sopranos?"

"Something like that."

Poker became such a major part of my everyday mental processes that the first thing I thought of when Haley mentioned where she lived was the exact distance from her apartment to the poker club that I used to play in. She sarcastically rolled her eyes at me that night when I mentioned poker. I'd roll them back at her one year later she'd ask me to help teach her and her friends from her acting class how to play Hold'em in the infamous Haleywood Homegame.

I had been writing on my poker blog for about six months when I met my first fellow poker blogger, Ugarte from Rick's Cafe. He and a few of his lawyer buddies had a group blog and a homegame. In one of those weird Six Degrees of Pauly, we found out that he went to law school with one of my prep school classmates. Ugarte invited me to his homegame at the Blue Parrot and I showed up with a six pack of Red Stripe and $200. Through Ugarte I'd meet Ferrari, Coach, Rick, Swish, and F Train who went to law school with Rick. We'd play dealer's choice on Monday nights and the games were ferociously fun. I introduced them to The Hammer and by the second homegame, everyone at the Blue Parrot wielded Hammers like they were pocket Aces.

At the time I supported myself by playing poker. I grinded it out for a couple hundred a week playing $1-2 NL in the underground clubs in New York City and I frequently played at Foxwoods or in AC, renting cars when my bankroll permitted, otherwise taking the bus with the other degenerate gamblers. I was reluctant to play online poker, despite Iggy and HDouble's endorsement of the fishy games on Party Poker. All of the winnings from my live play went to pay bills. I got caught up in that horrible habit of using my bankroll for non-poker things, instead of reinvesting back into my bankroll and moving up in levels. For the short term, I was fine but I craved the camaraderie of a homegame like Jerry's in Atlanta or the Trout House in Seattle where I could hang out, watch sports, drink, curse, smoke and have a few laughs. That's when Ugarte invited me to The Blue Parrot and I met some folks who would end up becoming close friends.

A couple of months later I met four more poker bloggers. I got blitzed with Daddy at setbreak of a Phish show in Deer Creek, Indiana. I had just smoked opium in the bathroom with a barefoot kid with a tattoo of 4:20 on the back of his neck, when Daddy and I crossed paths for the first time. A few days later, I visited BG in his Western Michigan hamlet. I sat in on his homegame during his 30th birthday and I met the cryptic Lord Geznikor. (I am the only blogger who's met Lord Geznikor and SirWaffle. I dare anyone to top those feats!)

Earlier that month, I also met AlCantHang at a Phillies game. He introduced me to his merry posse which included his lovely wife (and one of the few chicks who could drink Jim Morrison under the table) EvaCanHang, BigMike, Landow, and the infamous Lewey who sent me on tilt in Al's homegame.

I was in contact with group of twenty or so poker bloggers, which was about the majority of the bloggers at the time. I'd play on the $25 NL tables on Party Poker with Derek, The Fat Guy, Mr. Decker, BadBlood, Iggy, Maudie, Chris Halverson, BG, Lord Geznikor, Mean Gene, Glyph, HDouble, and Otis, while we'd sweat Grubby while he played 4 SNGs at once. We couldn't wait to drop the Hammer and put the other players (non-bloggers which we condescendingly nicknamed "tourists") on uber-tilt.

Iggy, Felicia, and Grubby set up different blogger tournaments and we played in them for shits and giggles. We jokingly called ourselves the WPBT as a spoof on the WPT more than anything else. Most of my adult life I avoided participating mainstream group activities. Joining a "club" or paramilitary organization was the last thing I wanted to do. I met some cool people and had a blast playing poker. But we also developed deeper friendships based on our other common interests.

Our friendships gave us the inspiration and encouragement to become a support system for each other. We all helped lay the foundation and from that solid base, a community sprang up and began to flourish. Over the past three years, hundreds of other blogs have built upon what we started.

Every few weeks I'd get an email from a reader and fan who told me that I inspired them to start a poker blog. I realized that the majority of people who read my blog didn't have one. I really thought that only other bloggers and my friends read my blogs. My words helped inspire strangers. I was blown away and mortified.

I wandered over to this side of the web and set up shop, thinking that there would be no way anyone else would do something similar. I was wrong. I was no longer the crazy guy in the woods living in a shack. Other lost and curious souls from all walks of life built of shacks next to mine and we soon had a shanty town. Then a ghetto.

I had written for several years without any financial success. Friends enjoyed my work but their endless encouragement didn't pay the bills. Sure, being a writer got me laid every now and then, along with a lot of free meals from friends with real jobs. For the most part I took a vow of poverty when I decided to pursue writing as a career. If I wanted to make money, I would have stayed on Wall Street or tried to find other work in that sector where you are compensated for your services. I took a different path and accepted that the cut in pay would also allow me the freedom to create while gaining experiences and exploring an adventurous life that millionaires try to buy when they are retired.

When I was hired to write my first freelance poker assignment, I was baffled, excited, and angry. Poker was by far the worst of my writing. I wrote a half a million other words that were much better, yet those were ignored. In late 2004, I had completed five novels and two screenplays and had not made a dime from my writing.

With the poker boom, my services were needed. I happened to be at the right place, at the right time. A European site called Professional Poker offered me a job to help write player profiles of selected pros. The owner was a regular reader of the Tao of Poker and liked my writing style. I started out writing a weekly assignment, which lasted for a year and a half. And of course, it took European sensibility to realize that I had talent. Thanks to W at Professional Poker for offering me my first poker job.

As Woody Allen once said, "Here, I'm a bum. There, I'm a genius. Thank God that the French exist."

The other assignments came rolling in. PokerTV.com needed content and I obliged. PokerMagazine.com hired me to write regularly for their site. Inside of a month, I had three clients that offered me steady work. That's when the Poker Prof offered me a job to move to Las Vegas cover the 2005 WSOP. That's when most of you started reading me from about a year ago. Through the Prof, I was picked up by Poker Player Newspaper. Through Poker Player, I was picked up by Fox Sports.

For a couple of hours (on more than one instance) during last year's WSOP, one of my poker articles was the lead story on the Fox Sports homepage. My 15 minutes of fame started winding down at that point.

During the WSOP, I met Lou Krieger through Amy Calistri. They were both avid readers and Lou's a real poker writer, not a hack like the majority of people in this industry. Lou created space for me in Poker Pro magazine. He told them to start a tournament column which would insure that I got an article in every issue. Since then I've also collaborated with All In and Bluff. I have never written anything for Card Player Magazine. I've never been asked.

Late last year, I was hired by the Borgata to help live blog their Winter Poker Open. That was the first time I was employed by an actual casino. Despite the long hours and working for 13 straight days, it was an amazing experience.

The pinnacle of this amazing adventure had to be the night I went to the Playboy Mansion a couple of months ago with Spaceman, CJ, Chad, Joe Speaker, BG, Bobby Bracelet, and AlCantHang. The eight of us, all of whom were decked out in new clothing, gathered on the front lawn of Hef's as the celebrity charity tournament winded down. I had just taken a piss on the lawn after I ripped a gager by the spider monkey cage. AlCantHang was lying on one of the lion statues and smoking a Marlboro. I looked around at my friends and a wave of humility fell over me. The moment wasn't special because I was at the Mansion. It was special because I got to experience it with my friends.

I've led a lucky life. I'm the luckiest person that I know.

Sometimes the cards aren't falling the way I want, I remind myself that I might be unlucky at the tables but I'm sitting pretty with a monster stack in the game of life.

For a while I grew extremely confused with the future of my career, writing, and the blogs. I hated all things poker which was ironic since it was the main source of my friends, income, and popularity. I should have been happy but wasn't. And I couldn't continue with anything until I discovered the source of disdain and depression. Shortly after the Mansion, I began to reassess how I approached everything in my life. It took me a couple of weeks of soul searching in Hollyweird of all places. After a good old fashioned bender, underneath the ubiquitous palm trees and thin layer of smog, I rediscovered the passion in writing and in poker.

I stopped worrying about the things I couldn't control or change, and focused on my strengths and what I could improve. Blogging is not writing. And I stopped blogging and started writing. I cut down my time on the internet. I stopped reading poorly written blogs and stopped reading blogs that I used to skim. I used the time that I was wasting to read books by excellent authors.

I changed my philosophy of how I cover poker tournaments and my gamble paid off. I was happy with my new format because it gave me more free time and it actually worked. I have a gameplan for this year's WSOP, something I didn't have last year. And for the first time in a very long time, I was excited to move back to Las Vegas and cover the WSOP. Before, I had been dreading it.

Since my revival or rebirth, I've been in a much better headspace. I'm not as moody or grumpy. I have a purpose again and don't feel like an old French whore. Although my writing has flourished across the board, I know that I can still do better. Right now I'm a C student but if I keep pressing myself, I can become a solid B+ student in about five or six more years.

* * * * *
This series came out of nowhere. It always existed. My past has always been there for me to use as material. It was a change of pace and something different to write about instead of bragging or lamenting about my wins or losses on the online site du jour.

When I got back from to NYC after the WPT Championships, I took a few days to clean out my old bedroom in my mother's apartment. It had become a storage space for myself and Derek, and a sometime flop space for me. There's an old futon mattress that I had from college in the corner and I wondered what the Over/Under was for how many girls that I slept with on that mattress faked their orgasms?

The room was a mess and unorganized. I had boxes and boxes of crap with paintings stacked up on one side of the room and books scattered all over. I grouped the books into one place and started throwing out useless junk and memories that I didn't mind going into the trash. During this Spring Cleaning, I was bombarded with flashbacks. It was inevitable. Seeing a painting, or a box of photographs from college, or a shoebox filled with concert ticket stubs filled me with memories. The once dark room was a museum to myself and I locked away all those feelings for the last few years while I've been on the road living out of my backpack again sleeping in different casinos, motels, and friends couches.

I once wrote about the Bozos and the Bolos. I said:

The Bozos had seats facing backwards on their tourbus so they could look back, while the Bolos sat looking forward. That represented two styles of thought. Are you one to look back constantly? Or do you stay in the moment while looking toward the future.

I've always been one to look forward more than looking back. The past was over and does not exist anymore, only inside the hallways of my mind. I'm the type of person who relishes living in the moment. But over the past month or so, I have been looking back. Sometimes to remind myself to lighten up and enjoy my life. Sometimes to try to figure out where I fucked up and how I can avoid that again. And sometimes just to feel better about myself. Sure there were plenty of sad moments, but I also hit some amazing highpoints that I wish some of you have the chance to experience in your lives.

The Tao of Poker is where I talk about the way of poker in my life, whether it's playing online or at the WSOP. Poker has been my gambling mistress over the last few years and if there's anything we both learned from the Born to Gamble series (besides, "Dude, you smoke a lot of pot!") is that gambling has been an integral part of my life, as much as breathing. It's always been there both directly and indirectly.

And I'm not just talking about gambling for money. I've gambled with my life, too many times to count. I've put my body through some several rigorous activities from various sports injuries to destroying millions of brain cells and weakening my liver during week long alcho-narco binges. I've driven drunk. I've cut the tags off my mattresses. I've gone swimming right after I ate. I've run with scissors. I had unprotected sex. I took plenty of chances running thousands of red lights. I bought hash off of razor blade toting Persians in a dark alley in Tokyo. I've flown on Air Pakistan...

The immediate high was more important than the future consequences. It's always been like that. That's why I gamble so much. The orgasmic rush. I've been chasing the high for my entire life. And when I get a small taste, it gives me a feeling of invincibility. Then I want more...

I've gambled with the law so many times. As much as you might think I've broken the laws with underage drinking and other substance abuse, nothing compares to the criminal acts I undertook when I worked on Wall Street. If I should be imprisoned, it would be for the crimes I committed against humanity when I wore a Brooks Brother suit.

I've gambled on friendships and relationships. Sometimes I knew I shouldn't be associated with some people, but I kept pressing my luck. I took leaps of faith with women I barely knew and jumped into relationships, knowing that I was a 5 to 1 underdog, yet fell hard and fast anyway.

I've gambled with my career so many times. For a while I got paid to gamble with other people's money. Then I took several big risks by leaving Wall Street during my attempt to become a writer. For many years that gamble was not paying off. These days, I take chances with new freelance clients. Will they pay me on time? Will they fuck me over? I assess the risk and take the shot.

I took a huge gamble last year when I accepted a job from the Poker Prof and covered the 2005 WSOP. Every time I stepped out of the Redneck Riviera, I gambled with my life. And this year, I'm going to gamble again and try to do thing differently at the 2006 WSOP.

Over the past few years, I grew frustrated that I couldn't get published in certain magazines or websites. I might be a considered one of the better writers in the poker industry, but that means jack shit in the real world of publishing. I'm still dealing with rejection on a daily basis which is humbling and frustrating. My work has yet to make it in front of a mainstream audience after a decade of sweat and agony. Maybe that will change as I have my eyes set on pursuing a career in Hollyweird.

I desperately wanted to get paid to write a weekly column at a number of places. That's never going to happen and the reality had depressed me. That's when I realized that I have something that's better than the prestigious gig that I thought I wanted. I own real estate on the web where I can publish my own words. Sure I might not get paid as much (if at all) for my writing, but at least I can control what I say and when I say it.

So who needs Salon, Harper's or Card Player when I have the Tao of Pauly, Truckin', and Tao of Poker?

Some of my favorite writers have never reached the audience numbers in their lifetime that I'm getting on a daily basis. I'm not going to waste that opportunity anymore. Last year, during the main event of the WSOP, I had well over one million unique visitors stop by the Tao of Poker. That's the equivalent to the city of Seattle. Imagine everyone in Seattle reading your blog and hanging on every word. Talk about pressure. That's enough to give anyone stage fright.

This year, I'm expecting a similar number of visitors hopefully more with at least two million or so sets of eyes fixated on the Tao of Poker's coverage of the 2006 WSOP. Judging by the quality of my writing over the past two months, I'm ready for that challenge. All artists, musicians, actors, painters, athletes, writers, singers, and comedians want to show off their skills in front of an audience. They want to make an impression onto society.

In a few weeks I'll be given that rare opportunity. It might be the last time I get the bright spotlight on me and I'm not going to waste that chance to speak my mind and talk about the way of poker as I see it at the WSOP.

That's why I rejected a fat paycheck from an online site to blog for them at the WSOP. I scoffed at the notion that a popular poker magazine wanted to offer me an hourly wage, that's the same as the other flunkies they get off of Craig's List. I'm going to the 2006 WSOP by myself which means that I'm paying my own way. I'm trying to get a sponsor in the next few days which will help cover some of the costs, but for now the airfare, rental car, rent at Grubby's, food, and lapdances... are all on my dime.

I'm going to cover the 2006 WSOP for the Tao of Poker and for the Poker Prof's Las Vegas and Poker Blog. I still will be contributing bi-monthly columns in Poker Player and I still have my column in Poker Pro. Anything else I do for them or any other media outlets like Fox Sports or Bluff will be on a freelance basis. I'm excited to work side by side with Flipchip again. His WSOP photos and my words will help tell you the daily story at this year's WSOP. Flipchip and I are the best at what we do. Scott Joplin once said, "It ain't braggin' if you can do it."

We did it last year and we're going to do it again. I hope you come back to experience the ride. And tell your friends and co-workers.

As long as I can remember, I've been gambling my entire life from the first Super Bowl I ever saw to getting my Pocket Aces cracked on Party Poker a couple of hours ago. And the biggest payoffs have been when I've gambled on myself as a longshot... and won. I've been doing things my way and I'm going to continue to do so. I was born a gambler and I'm not going to stop anytime soon.


Editor's Note: If you have not read the first five installments of Born to Gamble, then visit Part I: Where It All Begins, Part II: Southbound, Part III: Midnight Rider, Part IV: Ramblin' Man, and Part V: Whipping Post.
posted by Pauly at 6/10/2006 04:20:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Born to Gamble Part V: Whipping Post

I never believed in love at first sight until my weary eyes fixated on Angela. She and her friends parked and camped out next to me at the Gorge in George, Washington. She wore purple sundress and her long light brown hair cascaded down her small frame. Her resplendent brown eyes captivated my soul the second we made eye contact with one another. She barely stood five feet tall, but her aura ran me over like a freight train. She spoke with a slight drawl which gave me goosebumps every time she opened up her mouth.

"I know you're not from around here," I said.

"I'm not. I'm from Tex-is," she said.

"Tex-is? Or Tex-as?"

"Tex-is. Cause Tex-is where it's at."

That would be one of her many Texasisms that she would lay on me. Some of my favorites included, "You can put your boots in the oven, but that don't make them biscuits." Or my all time favorite, "You keep trying to sell me that lie, and I ain't buyin'."

In the summer of 1998 I saw two Phish concerts at the Gorge Ampitheatre, and that's where I met Angela. She and her friends from college drove up from Austin and coincidentally parked next to me in the campgrounds. We hung out both nights and stayed up late talking about everything. When it was time to go she promised that we'd keep in touch. She drove back to Texas to finish her last year in college and I'd be heading back to NYC a few months later when I found out my mother got sick and I had to come home.

During our time apart, we'd speak on the phone, shoot each other emails, and IM one another. My favorite parts of our courtship were the letters we'd write one another. She was an English major and wanted to be a writer. She had no problems whipping out ten or fifteen pages of elegant prose and mailed them to me with girly doodles of flowers and happy faces on the pages or the envelopes.

(Editor's Note: When we eventually broke up, I told her that I burned all of her letters. I lied. I was angry and wanted to hurt her. She broke my heart and the only thing I knew I could say that could equally make her weep uncontrollably was to say I destroyed her love letters. To this day, I never told her the truth and I assumed that a part of her held onto a flicker of hope that I was just bluffing. They sit in a shoebox near my baseball cards in the corner of my old bedroom. I haven't opened that box in years. I still lack the courage to read her words.)

Phish played four concerts in NYC at Madison Square Garden the end of 1998, including their New Year's Eve show. I had an extra ticket to New Years and I posted a message on a Phish bulletin board that I had an extra and was looking for "interesting trades." One guy offered me $400 for the ticket when I got a call from Angela saying that she was looking for an extra ticket. I did what any guy would do... I gave her the ticket for free.

We had floor seats for New Year's Eve. Phish opened up with a cover version of Prince's 1999. Fitting, I thought, because I used to listen to that song when I was a kid and 1999 seemed so distant. But there I was, on the cusp of 1999 dancing in the middle of a sea of wasted neo-hippies.

Phish played three sets that night and took the stage for their final set at 11:45pm. When Midnight struck, millions of revelers were celebrating in Times Square nine blocks north of the Garden, and Phish played Auld Lang Syne as hundreds of various sized balloons of different colors fell from the ceiling onto the crowd (very similar to the scene in the documentary Bittersweet Motel which occurred on NYE in 1997). That's when I went in for a kiss. Our first kiss. And in the history of first kisses, it might have been number one.

When Angela graduated college in the spring of 1999, we embarked on a journey that would last almost a year and a half where we criss-crossed the country several times following Phish around on their various tours. We saw fifty or sixty Phish shows together in 30 plus states in two years along with catching dozens of other bands and visiting Jazz Fest in New Orleans. We spent weeks and months sleep deprived and jacked up on whatever party favors we could find. Lucky for me, I had two excellent runs during March Madness and my gambling bankroll helped fund our trips.

While we were on the road, we stopped off in places like Reno and Biloxi and I taught Angela how to play blackjack. She walked away with $200 one night, even though the dealer and pit boss carded her several times.

As much as my life was unstable, I found a semblance of happiness even though I was constantly on the road and lived out of my backpack for two years. We spent most of our time sleeping on couches or on the floors of friends' apartments in San Francisco, Seattle, Alabama, Ohio, and in Houston. We'd camp out when we could and spent the rest of the time in cheap motels avoiding the AIDS-ridden comforters and dried cum stains on the walls.

I got to see America again ad more of it from the highways, freeways, and backroads. Although certain parts of America started looking like one long homogenous suburban strip mall, there were still physical and geographical differences that set different areas of our vast country apart.

In two years we visited so many cities together that it's hard to keep track: NYC, Dallas, Detroit, New Orleans, Phoenix, LA, Portland, Boise, Denver, Memphis, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Las Vegas, San Diego, Kansas City, Seattle, and smaller towns in between like Las Cruces, Pelham, Antioch, Columbus, and Vail. We spent the millenium in Florida seeing Phish's epic concert from when they played from 11:30pm to 6am without any breaks.

I'm shocked that we never got into any serious trouble. In Las Cruces at a traffic stop, state troopers wanted to search the mini-van that we were driving but Angela stood up to the cop wearing mirrored sunglasses at 2am, exhibiting her Texas toughness when she blurted out, "You're not searching my momma's van without a warrant. We're gonna pull over right here and wait until you get one."

Man, she would have been a great poker player. She pulled off the bluff of the decade when the hardass trooper let us go and never searched the van. You can only imagine what we were carrying.

We pushed our luck on so many nights. Life on the road is difficult and dangerous as is without encountering humorless law enforcement types. The road has killed some of the best musicans like Buddy Holly, Hank Williams, Otis Redding, and Jimi Hendrix.

"It's a goddammed impossible way of life," explained musician Robbie Robertson in the documentary The Last Waltz about constantly being on the road.

Yet, once again we both came out of it without a scratch with just a couple of speeding tickets.

So what happened with the adoarble girl from Texas that I thought was the love of my life? Hippie love never lasts and when we tried to have a normal relationship and stay in one place for an extended amount of time, things didn't work out. A few months after I got back from Japan with Senor, we broke up. She went to grad school in Texas and I wanted her to move to San Francisco, New Orleans, or Portland with me. Texas women are extremely stubborn and independent, and they don't like to be told what to do. Deep down, I thought that we were meant for each other and that we were just going through a rough patch. I figured that we'd get back together in a year or so after she got her master's degree. I was wrong. Each day, we drifted farther apart and she became freakishly and fanatically religious after 9.11 which that caused a deeper rift in our friendship.

When 2001 started, I was heart broken, deep in debt, and artistically lost in New York City. Senor always had a way of cheering me up and would say things like, "Women. Fucking women. Ah, fuck 'em. Let's go to Iceland."

This is the same guy who walked into a crowded bar in Rio di Janerio during Carnival, jumped up onto a table, dropped his pants, then announced to the patrons, "Who wants to suck my dick?"

Thank God for impulsive friends with credit cards. Just like that we were in Iceland a week later in the middle of January with about ninety minutes of daylight roaming the streets of Reykjavik drunk like toothless Hooligans on Viking beer. Senor read an article in Details magazine that Icelandic women were the most beautiful in the world and the easiest to sleep with. He figured a romp in the sack with a blonde Icelandic girl would lift my spirits.

A few months earlier in the summer of 2000, we embarked on the greatest trip of my life to Japan when we followed Phish for six concerts in four cities (Tokyo, Nagoya, Fukuoka, and Osaka) where they played in small clubs and venues. One gig in Nagoya was located in a club on the sixth floor of a shopping mall which had about 300 people packed into a space limited to 200. It was a special trip because we bonded with people who we had a tough time communicating with our different languages, but we were brought together by music. That was our translator as we discovered a sub-culture of hard-core Japanese hippies who loved the same bands I loved.

We befriended a couple of guys from Tokyo who were in band called Horse. They would come to America later that year and I took them on Phish tour with me and Angela. I made them wake and bake and ride the rollercoaster at New York New York during our time in Las Vegas. They were awesome guys and amazing guitar players. I helped write a few songs for one of their albums.

Yeah, I guess I never mentioned this, but years before I was an internet celerity, I was a well respected songwriter in the Tokyo underground music scene. I wrote the lyrics for Horse and they wrote the music. I was limited to using certain words and arranged them in a way that they could sing smoothly without too many pronunciation difficulties. It's odd to think, but right now a bunch of Japanese long hairs are playing songs that I wrote somewhere on the mezzanine of the Tokyo Subway.

(Editor's Note: Just a warning, the next several thousand words should not be considered light reading. I'm going to back that dark place inside of me to describe a three year period of my life that was equivalent to Dante's version of hell. If you are not able to handle that difficult material, then I suggest you stop reading this post.)

The break up with Angela set me on relationship tilt so badly that when I got back from Iceland I suffered the worse afflication that any writer could attract... I couldn't write. I didn't have writer's block. I don't believe in it. "Writer's block" is a pussy-ass passive-aggressive device that amateur scribes use to try to get sympathy from non-artistic types. My problem was that it just hurt too much to write because whenever I sat down to write, all I could talk about was Angela and how miserable I was without her and how happy we were when we were together. The one thing in life, writing, that gave me relentless pleasure, was also the source of intense pain.

I discovered painting around that time. I was going crazy and I needed some way to express myself. Senor and I saw these trippy apocalyptic landscapes in Iceland that were formed by volcanic activity. I still had those vivid images in my head after my trip and ended up painting a series inspired by what we saw. The ground was black. The sky was purple and the mountains were green.

I began painting without one art lesson and locked myself in my studio for several days at a time working on different projects. I made sculptures out of all these used lighters that I collected. I made paintings with used Metrocards. Whatever materials I could find, I incorporated into my art. There was a six or seventh month period where I was in a depressed state of mind and rarely left my studio. I never watched TV. I sat in the dark and listened to old jazz records and other depressing music like certain Johnny Cash ballads, Elliot Smith, and Radiohead. I read Dostoevsky constantly and visited museums where I would study paintings for hours at a time.

I also met a neurotic California blonde named Betty around the same time and we started dating after she successfully stalked me for several months. I slowly started coming out of my shell. By the end of the summer, I felt somewhat normal and healthy again. I spent more time with Betty hanging out in hipster coffee houses and trenoid bars in her posh Brooklyn neighborhood. Football season started and I was gambling on the pro games and ran pools and fantasy leagues with Derek and my friends.

Just when things started to go back to normal, 9.11 kicked me in the side of the head. I woke up early that day on a brisk and cool morning for early September with high blue skies. I was in the middle of writing something when I got an IM from one of my friends in Japan. He wanted to know if I was OK because a bomb exploded (that's what the Japanese press originally said happened) in the World Trade Center.

You know the rest of that story.

Betty freaked out and went back to California about a week after 9.11 on my birthday of all days. Alone again and lost, I was forced to attend several funerals and memorial services by myself. Several guys I worked on Wall Street were missing along with seven of my prep school classmates. By the fourth or fifth funeral, you get numb to it all. If you didn't live in NYC, you got to see some footage on TV of people weeping at vigils. But what you didn't get to see was the aftermath that infected New Yorkers weeks and months later when families realized that there were no bodies being pulled out of Ground Zero, just body parts and fragments. And the front page of the paper would be a picture of another brave and courageous cop or firefighter who had a funeral that day.

I watched mothers faint during their sons' funerals. I also burst into tears when a four year old girl ran up during one service and clutched her father's empty coffin. To me, that image was as much 9.11 as the planes crashing into the towers. All those solemn eyes and desperate souls crammed into a church consumed with rage and hate, and somewhere trying to make sense of why some of us live and others of us died. For a while, those would be the last tears I'd shed.

For a couple of months after 9.11, I wandered around with senses of hopelessness and helplessness. Senor felt even worse. He wasn't even in America during the attacks. He was on vacation, sitting in a bar in Vietnam brushing off the advances of several teenaged hookers when he looked up and saw the carnage on CNN.

I was already near rock bottom and 9.11 left me wondering, "What the hell am I doing here?"

And that's when the phone rang. Sometimes you get lucky in life when you need it the most. Mack, my former mentor and Wall Street jungle guide called to offer me a job. He started up his own firm and wanted people he could trust on his team. He said that despite walking off the job several years earlier, he still had a lot of respect for me and I was his favorite trainee and assistant that he ever had.

I was broke and directionless, so a second job on Wall Street seemed the right thing to do. Afterall, if we didn't get the economy back on track, then the terrorists win right? I finally had a feeling of accomplishment, like I was pitching in to do my share to help heal my city and my country. I became another spoke in the wheel of capitalism.

I was still had long hair at the time and I made a deal with my mentor that I'd cut my hair he waived the drug test. He agreed and I dusted off the Brooks Brothers suits and headed back downtown.

If you worked in Lower Manhattan after 9.11, then you know about the smell. That's what you didn't get from TV and internet images. The foul smell of death was omnipresent. Derek worked on Water Street a few blocks away from Ground Zero and would often call me up and say, "They must have digged up something really bad today."

These days, when I'm having a really bad day and start feeling sorry for myself, I remind myself of that smell and I'm jolted back into reality. If there's one thing I could wish for, it would be that no one, especially your children and your children's children, should never again have to experience the stench of destruction and seared flesh.

Some New Yorkers avoided walking by Ground Zero and chose different ways to get to work. I had to see it because it helped inspire me to work hard everyday. It was difficult enough walking into the trenches and seeing the first desk in the row blocked off as a memorial to one of Mack's friends (and a former co-worker of ours) who jumped to his death on 9.11. Every few days, new flowers would be set up and during certain holidays, his memorial was decorated accordingly. On St. Patrick's Day, I opened up a bottle of Guinness and left it in front of his picture. It was there for two days until one of the cleaning ladies threw it out because it began to smell.

As the days flowed into weeks and weeks flowed into months, I discovered that I was more depressed than ever before. The last place I wanted to be was stuck in an office on Wall Street. I got into a huge fight with Mack and ended up getting fired. I found a job later that afternoon when an old prep school alumni pulled a few strings for me at JP Morgan. We had been doing volunteer work together teaching inner city kids how to play chess. We'd go into the ghetto on the weekends for a few hours and play chess with kids. He was a few years older than me and worked at JP Morgan. One of his golf buddies was looking for a few new brokers and he hired me after a five minute interview.

JP Morgan was like working for the NY Yankees of Wall Street brokerage houses. I hoped that working for one of the big boys would lift my spirits. But it didn't last. I fell back into a deep funk. But at least I was a stock broker instead of trading bonds. And the irony of it all was that I was pitching pharmaceutical stocks to suburban dentists and widows.

I started a blog called the Tao of Pauly in May of 2002. My old college roommate was a journalist in Tampa and had a blog called The Daily Dave. He suggested that I start one too because it would be an excellent scratch pad for me while I worked. A month later I began Truckin' which would be a forum for my friends to share and post their travel stories. Senor had just quit his job and moved to Southeast Asia and had a ton of stories to tell. Plus I wanted to take some time and write my travel stories and since every magazine I ever submitted my work to rejected me, I wanted to publish my own work. Although starting to write again helped get me through my bitter days, I still hadn't found my voice and was miserable at work. Then things took a turn for the worse.

On the eve of my 30th birthday I had sunk to the lowest point of my life. It was a rainy day and water seeped through the sidewalk grates and sprayed the entire subway platform. The train was late and I stood in a wet suit after not having slept well in days. The end of the month was nearing and I was nowhere close to filling my quota. With the Enron scandal, consumer confidence was at an all time low and the Europeans pulled all their money out of the American financial markets. We were all struggling and I was caught in a heavy spin. I hated my life. Every ounce of it. I had such an amazing time in my 20s that life in my 30s seemed futile.

What was the point of living if I had nothing to look forward to?

I was working on Wall Street, yet still broke and deep in debt. Most of my friends were out of touch, dead, or joined the rank and file of suburban drudgery. I committed artistic suicide months earlier when I took a desk job and gave up writing. Plus I had just discovered that my lover was pregnant. How could we have been so stupid? I was almost 30, gaining weight, losing my hair, totally broke, and on the edge of hurling myself into the abyss. I wanted to jump in but was too afraid.

I reached a moment of desperation and prayed to God. I asked him to send a deranged homeless man to rescue me by pushing me to my death in front of the next subway. I wanted to die and was too chicken shit to kill myself, so I had to ask God to do it for me. I was a gutless prick and I deserved to be mangled beneath an uptown No. 1 train.

I don't think God was listening to me that day because the train arrived in the station and I got on and went home. Or maybe he was listening and decided that my life was worth sparing. That's for you to debate.

If there is a God, he saved me by not answering my plea for help. If there is no God, then I reached the tipping point where I thought that death was a better alternate to life. That's how serial killers turn to the dark side. That's how suicide bombers think before they strap on the bomb vest. That's what goes through people's minds before they jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.

If I honestly thought death was a better option than life, then I needed to make changes in my life to make it more meaningful. The next day during my birthday dinner, Derek saved my life when he threw me a life preserver. He asked me if I saw the last episode of Project Greenlight, the screenwriter contest where you get your script made into a film by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. He joked that I was a better writer than any of those hacks and that I should enter. In fact for my birthday present, he offered to pay for the entry fee. I went home and looked on their website. I had ten days until the deadline and no idea for a script.

I cranked out something called Charlie's Goldfish about a guy from New York who worked in Hollywood and came home after his father's death and found out that the bar his father owned was going to be sold and made into a Starbucks. Since I only slept two or three hours a night anyway, it took me less than 10 days to write (while I worked at JP Morgan) and it was the first major writing project that I had ever finished. It got a couple of good reviews in the screening process but it ended up getting rejected. I had confidence with writing for the first time in years and felt as though I had something to live for again.

A month later, I started NaNoWriMo which is an online literary project for wanna-be writers when you write a 50,000 word novel inside of a month. It took me nine days to write Jack Tripper Stole My Dog. And to this day, close friends of mine say that's the best thing I have ever written.

Here's the tagline:

Jack Tripper Stole My Dog is an odd family story, of sorts, about a man and the women in his life: his wife, his daughter, and his lover. His life is filled with a long history of lying, cheating, gossiping, infidelity, hijinks, rape, incest, war, turmoil, some reflection and eventually unfolding into torture, murder, revenge and redemption. Add to the mix a half of dozen scorned lovers, psycho stalkers, several literate and pugnacious lesbians, George Bush, interstate serial killers, the KGB, canine tossing, taxi driving hitmen, one horny Ecstasy popping Hollywood Director, a drug peddling Mossad Agent, Chicks with Dicks porn, Bill Gates, suicide, date rapists, the Russian mafia, bad hippie bands, a bizarre and sick love triangle, junkies and drunks, trick turning Catholic high school girls, broken hearts, Jesus Freaks, swinging Upper East Siders, Internet lies and disinformation, a transvestite hotdog vendor, John Lennon murder conspiracy, the impending Russian-Chinese War, drunken frat boys and spoiled sorority girls, a corrupt heroin smuggling Reverend, Julia Stiles movies, and of course the CIA. That makes for a comedic and existentialist journey called Jack Tripper Stole My Dog.

I was writing again and in 2003 I decided to get back together with Betty. The sun was shining in my world for the first time in two years. Sure my job sucked but I started writing on the weekends and during my free time and started gambling with the stock market. We were on the verge of invading Iraq and I took advantage of my position as a broker and ended up taking a nice profit off the table during that short period when the stock market boomed. War is good for Wall Street. Coupled with an excellent run of gambling on the March Madness tournament, I was ecstatic. It felt good to gamble and write again.

Just when I thought I turned the corner, I had to deal with another tragic event in my life. It happened three years ago this month and only my friends and a handful of bloggers know what went down. I won't discuss the morbid details here, but I lost someone who was very close to me. And it hurt so much that all the drugs, liquor, and religion in the world couldn't make the pain go away.

I went on mega tilt. I got fired from JP Morgan and I started drinking in bars in the mornings. I was 190 pounds of walking misery and I did everything to numb my feelings. I spiraled and spun out of control. I had writing to help cushion some of the pain, but the rest of the time was unbearable.

I'm 100% sure I would have never made it if I didn't discover a way out of that depression. After drinking too much at the Cedar Tavern on morning, I boarded a bus to Foxwoods Casino. A couple hours later, I had sobered up and found myself sitting down at a $2-$4 Limit Texas Hold'em table. For the rest of that day, I felt somewhat normal. I was relaxed. Calm. And focused on playing my hands spending more time thinking about what cards the old guy in the Red Sox t-shirt held in his hand than thinking about how sad I was or the fact I was unemployed and never told anyone except Derek. For a few hours, the weight of the world and my depression had been lifted off my shoulders.

I went home after that trip and ended up writing Sweet Nothing (a.k.a. The Baby & Winky Novel) in less than ten days. It was a fucked up story about two fucked up characters that my friends loved reading about in short stories. I decided they deserved a full novel and some of my friends think that's some of my best writing. It features one of the best passages I have ever written:

There were a couple of seconds after she stabbed me and before the blood started squirting out where Baby and I calmly stared at each other. Our glances lovingly locked onto one another and we had a tranquil moment. Our symbiotic original connection only lasted for a second maybe two, but it was one of those eternal seconds that seem to last forever and you never want to end. It's those eclectic moments you come across while thinking about life's odd idiosyncrasies, while stuck in a sullen slouch at the end of a bar, drinking away the roughness of the day's grind. Or perhaps that treasured moment comes to mind while staring out the window of an airplane, your eyes bouncing back and forth between the clouds and the endless horizon and your shared memories burn a hole in your pants pocket, like a firecracker with a slow fuse that you lit years ago and simply forgot it was there until one day, POP! It goes off. And as our still bodies breathed together and our moment ended, all serenity vanished and I saw panic, fear, desperation, anger, and redemption jump on top of each other in a scrum and hide behind the pupils in her sky blue eyes. Simultaneously, heavy drops of tears rained from her swollen eyes as intense globs of menacing red blood bubbled out of the two inch cut on my bicep, forming an oval pool on our Salvation Army bought $18 couch.

The Baby and Winky book could not have been written at any other time of my life. And I'm glad I did it. After writing two novels and a screenplay in less than a year, I felt like a had a purpose again.

Aside from writing or getting wasted, I discovered something that I enjoyed doing immensely... poker. The more poker that I played, the less time I had to worry about my life and allow those negative feelings to haunt me. I switched vices. Poker took priority over drugs and alcohol. I played in clubs in the city and headed to Foxwoods, Mohegan Sun (when they still had a poker room), or to Atlantic City.

I began to write more frequently especially about poker. My friends got pissed that the Tao of Pauly was cluttered with too much poker content and they begged me to start a new site... the Tao of Poker. That was in August of 2003. And since then you pretty much know my story.

... to be continued


Editor's Note: If you have not read the first four installments, then visit Born to Gamble Part I: Where It All Begins, Born to Gamble Part II: Southbound, Born to Gamble Part III: Midnight Rider, and Born to Gamble Part IV: Ramblin' Man. The sixth installment will be published in a few days.
posted by Pauly at 6/08/2006 09:57:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Thursday Quickies

I wrote articles in the June issues of Poker Pro Magazine, Bluff, and Poker Player Newspaper. You can pick up Bluff and Poker Pro at bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders. Poker Player Newspaper appears in most card rooms and poker rooms in casinos. You can also visit their site and download the last issue in PDF format.

Here's a few freelance articles of mine that have been recently published in print/online:

2006 WSOP Preview: The $10 Million Man (or Woman) (Las Vegas & Poker Blog)
Longshot wins $3.7 Million WPT Championship (Poker Pro Magazine)
Poker Stars: 5 Million and Counting (Poker Player Newspaper)
Online Poker: Avoiding Distractions (Poker Player Newspaper)
Pauly's Picks: Las Vegas Poker (Las Vegas & Poker Blog)

And here's the Born to Gamble series that has been appearring on the Tao of Poker:

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

When you get a chance, stop by and check out Flipchip's review of the Palms Poker Room. It's a must read if you have never been to the Palms before.

Now, go check out Spaceman's coverage of the final table of the WPT Mandalay Bay for Bluff Magazine. He's been doing a great job for this event and don't miss out.

Lastly, thanks to Top Gambling Blogs for mentioning the Tao of Poker in their Top 25 Gambling Blogs.
posted by Pauly at 6/08/2006 04:20:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Born to Gamble Part IV: Ramblin' Man

When Senor moved to New York City in the mid-1990s, all hell broke loose. He's Neal Cassady to my Jack Kerouac. He's Oscar Acosta to my Hunter Thompson. He's Lenny to my Carl. Although we were fraternity brothers from the same pledge class, we weren't close friends and were in different circles during college. That changed when he left chiropractor school in Atlanta and moved to Manhattan after his hand modeling career faltered.

I had just walked out of my job on Wall Street and started writing my first ever novel (that would remain unfinished to this day). I found a job as the manager of an adult video and novelty store called the Booty Shack located on the Queens and Long Island border. By days, I sold German pissing videos and purple dildos to sexually adventurous New Yorkers. By night, Senor and I were partying it up hard drinking heavily at bars in Murray Hill and trying to pick up horny chicks in AOL chat rooms.

We went on a lot of trips together. When you travel with other people, it's important that your personalities mesh otherwise you're doomed to have an ugly trip. Senor and I got along extremely well, and that's why we've traveled together over all these years. We're both self-sufficient and easy going, willing to do anything at any given point, yet disciplined enough that we would stick to a schedule and itinerary. We were both travelers and not tourists and always took that attitude with us no matter where we went.

We took an amazing trip to Europe and you can imagine the trouble we got into during my first ever visit to Amsterdam. The events of one night were captured in a story called Shooting Pool, which involves a pair of underaged French girls. Here's an excerpt...

Amsterdam
7 Aug 96

I was kicked out of the Holland Casino for a dress code violation. The Euro-trash uppercrust take their casinos seriously. My attire failed to meet the minimum specifications: clean dress shoes, pants, collared shirt, and a jacket and tie. After a quick glance at the patrons inside I realized that most of the men were well groomed and they were all wearing tuxedos. It was scene right out of a James Bond movie and there I stood at the entrance trying to get in, decked out in Birkenstocks, ripped jeans, and a NY Knicks T-shirt. It didn't help that I had been tripping on mushrooms for most of the night, and I decided the best thing to do before I came down was to play a few hands of blackjack, and maybe even find a poker game to sit in on... but I couldn't even get in the front door... More

That story is one of several thousand odd nights that I experienced with Senor. Shooting Pool summed up the kind of hijinks that we would get into on our trips. I used to send out an e-mail newsletter to our friends about our latest "misadventures" and at some point I would write something like, "It wasn't until the plane safely landed after skidding a hundred yards on the slick runway when Senor sheepishly mentioned to me that he was flying without pilot's license and dropped out of flight school after the first week."

No matter if it was Amsterdam, NYC, or New Orleans... we pushed ourselves to the limits of sanity and sobriety and back again. If there was anyone that I knew who enjoyed living in the moment more than me... it was Senor.

And we gambled too. We'd bet on college basketball and pro football through bookies. We'd also play the occasional poker home game at my apartment in Park Slope. We started going to the Connecticut casinos when Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun opened up. Senor's parents lived in Connecticut and we'd take the train to the burbs, then pick up his car to drive to the casino. We'd play blackjack all night and get stoned in the parking deck while Senor would do his $100 bet trick when he'd walk up to any table game, whether it was roulette, craps, or blackjack and bet a single $100 bet. If he won, he was up $200. He'd bet a Ben Franklin on Red or the Pass Line or play a hand of blackjack. And that's how Senor rolled...

It was at that point in our mid-20s where we raised the stakes that we'd gamble with. Instead of money, we began testing the limits of ourselves and our bodies and gambled with our lives. In many ways that sentence sounds more dramatic than it was because at the time we were just living and living on the edge was all that I knew. But the more I think about what we did in the 1990s, the more I realized how lucky we were that we never ended up dead or in jail. We managed to avoid hospitals and court rooms as I began to rack up material for a five or six novels.

We stayed up for days at a time partying and lived for a few years as functioning addicts. I dunno how Senor held down an 8-5 office job in Midtown, but he did and always showed up no matter how many doses of acid we took the night before or how late we were out drinking with NYU girls. My job didn't matter as much. As manager of the Booty Shack part of the job requirement was for me to be completely wasted on duty. I could go on and on about that time in my life... but then you wouldn't buy the book.

I gambled pretty heavily on the March Madness tournament every year. That's how I made the bulk of my income. If I won big, I'd have a fun summer and use my winnings to travel to some place exotic with Senor or see a bunch of concerts or go to Jazz Fest in New Orleans. If I lost, it was going to be a boring summer in the city while I sold anal lube to bored Long Island housewives and wrote pretentious poetry in my spiraled notebooks.

At some point I met a green and orange haired Suicide Girl named Zoe and moved out to Seattle to live with her. Getting to Seattle was another one of Senor and mine's epic misadventures. It started with me going out to the middle of Pennsy-tucky to visit Derek who just graduated college. He was friends with a non-pot-smoking Jamaican guy who was an ex-Army sergeant and worked as a prison guard at Lewisberg Federal Penitentiary. That's where the 1993 WTC bombers are held.

Anyway, Derek's friend fixed up cars and sold me a 1984 Chrysler Le Baron that I purchased with my March Madness winnings. It was a non-convertible and we joked that it was "Jon Voight's car" from that episode of Seinfeld when George though he bought the actor's used car. The car didn't have a working stereo and the AC sucked camel balls. But we made due and drove all the way from NYC to Seattle. We'd have the windows down most of the time and whoever rode shotgun held a mini boom box which was our only entertainment. We played every Grateful Dead bootleg in my collection as we visited friends in different cities along the way.

We got drunk and snuck into the fifth row at a Cubs game at Wrigley field in Chicago. We tried to pick up girls from the local high school volleyball team in Kearney, Nebraska. We played hackey sack in the end zone of Folsom Field in Boulder, Colorado. We ate mushrooms in Laramie, Wyoming. We almost broke down in Jackson Hole and had to spend the night. Senor got into a fight with a bouncer at a cowboy bar across the street from out motel. We got thrown out and were lucky to leave Wyoming with only a few scrapes.

We headed through majestic Idaho and wide open Montana before we got to Spokane. We spent the night in Spokane. There was a dentist's wife who lived nearby that I used to have phone sex with from time to time. I met her in a Motel 6 on the shady side of town, while Senor rented the room next door and ordered two escorts from the phone book. A mutual friend of ours would constantly order two girls at a time in NYC. He'd pick the better looking of the two and send the ugly one home. Sometimes he paid for both. So there we were, on a random Tuesday night in Spokane in $49 motel rooms, and letting our sexual deviancy loose like an undisciplined pit bull running around in a playground.

When we got to Seattle, Senor flew home and that's when things took a turn for the worse. One of the reasons I moved to Seattle was to be with Zoe, but that didn't work out. I think I was with her less than a week before we decided we made a huge mistake. She moved back to Bellingham while I stuck around Seattle. I could have gone back to NYC but I decided to stay. All I can remember about her was the pyramid of cigarette butts in her ashtray. She wore purple lipstick and the ends of the smashed butts would have a ring of purple on the edges.

Years later I realized that I knew that relationship was doomed and never going to work but I needed an excuse to leave NYC and Zoe was my out. That was a huge gamble to move to a city on the opposite coast where I only knew one person (my buddy from college Slinger) and I didn't have a place to live, nor a job. In those circumstances, you do your most living... when you say "Fuck it!" and move all your shit to some place completely different. That's when you find out what type of person you really are. I've always been independent and resourceful. And those attributes were put to the test. Luckily, I found a place to live within two days near the University of Washington and within a week I had two jobs.

"You reached the end of the line," Slinger would say about Seattle.

He was an East Coaster like myself and if anyone ever moved from East to West they understand the subtle and abrupt differences in mentalities from living in an East coast city like Boston or NYC, to living in a place like Seattle, which was more a small town that exploded into a huge city. I had a tough time adjusting to dealing with the West Coast flakiness at first, but after I got used to that way of living, I began to love living there, despite the rain. And it rained a shitload. When I moved there during the early summer, there was zero precipitation with bright blue skies and you could see Mt. Rainer from any spot in the city. Then one day in September it started raining and didn't stop for ten months.

My two years in Seattle were vital for my personal development as a person and writer. I had to leave familiar surroundings and do my own thing for a period of time while I sculpted my voice as a writer and I explored myself creatively unfettered from the criticism of my peers and without any of the prejudice and negativity that my family bombarded me with after I left Wall Street. I guess in their eyes, I flipped out. I graduated from a good college, walked out of a perfect and high paying job, stopped shaving, grew out my hair and worked in a porn shop before I moved out to the Pacific Northwest which is the serial murder capital of Western Civilization.

I was the hardest working slacker in Seattle in 1998. I held four jobs and I humped two crappy hourly wage positions. I had been making six figures on Wall Street and I gave it up for the Bohemian lifestyle. And yes, my bed was a mattress thrown into the corner of my room that I bought off a guy named Crackhead Stu for $20.

I read a ton of books and people whom I worked found out I was a writer and they would give me books. I never had a shortage of reading material and I discovered a couple of writers that I never read before like Chuck Palahniuk, Carlos Castaneda, Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell, David Sedaris, and Philip Roth.

Most of the time I sat on a huge couch scarred with burn holes on my porch with my housemates. We'd make fun of the sorority girls jogging by and watched the steady rain while we chain smoked and elicit sympathy from one another about our depressing childhoods and hopeless futures. Sometimes the rants would be politically driven. Slackers and hippies had opinions on everything including the government's coverup of UFOs and widespread usage of mind-control drugs. We'd share our disdain and scorn for the suits in Hollyweird or the fucktards that ran the major music labels. They were both guilty of ignoring originality.

Sometimes we'd drink micro-brews, pop too many pills, and play really bad music in the basement of our house until sunrise trying to become the postmodern reincarnation of the Velvet Underground. But that never happened because we were unmotivated ganja smoking wanna-be musicians and the melodies reverberating from my guitar sounded more like two frogs dry-humping each other on a squeaky stairway.

I also drank exclusively at the Blue Moon Tavern a few blocks from my house which had been frequented by other literary greats such as Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg. I hoped that by pissing in the same urinals that they pissed in and by sitting on the same bar stools that they sat in would miraculously make me a better writer. Tom Robbins described the Blue Moon as "a frenzy of distorted joy spinning just outside the reach of bourgeois horrors."

That summed up my time in Seattle.

I focused on writing and spent hours and hours every week holed up on my room sending off articles for submission in various literary magazines. Everything was rejected and I started hanging up my rejection letters on my wall, so when I left my room everyday to go out into the real world, I was reminded that I was a failure and that my biggest priority of that day was to improve my writing skills. After a while I stopped hanging up the rejection form letters because there was no more room left to hang them.

My buddy Slinger and I decided to write a screenplay together and for five or six months, we were diligent. He waited tables downtown and I'd come by after work to see what he wrote and I'd give him my pages. We both had no idea what we were doing and we spent most of the time drinking beer and smoking weed while discussing the screenplay with the Marnier's game on in the background. We never finished the script because Slinger got a job as a beat writer for a small newspaper in Florida and left Seattle. That screenplay became one of forty projects that I began in the 1990s and never finished.

During March Madness I opened up an account with a sports book on the island of Curacao. I funded it through Western Union and got a 100% deposit bonus. My buddies would place smaller bets using my account. After the second day, we were all broke. We had to fund my account three more times before the tournament ended. We all lost heavily that year but it was a lot of fun despite the fact we were complete degenerates.

The first time I ever played Texas Hold'em was in Bellingham when Slinger took me to the Nooksack Casino. We called it the "Nut Sack" and Slinger used to play there when he lived in Bellingham with Dutch a few years earlier. Dutch was the same guy who used the infamous "Dutch Bucks" in Jerry's homegame in Atlanta. Slinger and Dutch would play Hold'em there everyday after work. Slinger even won a few tournaments there. They quickly got me hooked on the two card poker game.

In Seattle, we occasionally played cards at Slinger's apartment with his roommate Ty who worked at a swanky bar and restaurant downtown. Some of Ty's co-workers lived in a house in Fremont and they held a home game every Monday. On the West Coast, Monday Night Football started at 6pm and that year they began it at 8pm EST or 5pm PCT. So the home game would start at halftime in the kitchen of the Trout House. They nicknamed it the Trout House because several members of the acid-jazz band Kilgore Trout lived there. They would practice in the basement and we could hear them during the games. When practice was over, the guitar and sax player would sit in and play with us.

We'd drink Labatt's, smoke weed, listen to great music, and tell dirty jokes. In short, we had a blast and since I worked weekends and had Mondays off... it was the one day of the week I couldn't wait for. The games at the Trout House were some of my favorite home games of all-time because everyone who played in it was pretty cool and we didn't mind losing money to one another. Mostly everyone had dead-end jobs either as line cooks or bartenders or waitstaff which meant everyone had cash to play.

We had some good players and the games were dealer's choice. We'd buy in $20 or $40 to start and it would not be uncommon to rebuy a few times. We played a lot of Stud and I introduced a game called 75 Cent Mexican, which is a variation of Midnight Baseball or No Peak. Ante was 75 cents (which was 3x the normal ante) and each player got dealt seven cards but you cannot look at them. 3s and 9s are wild, you can buy a card if for 75 cents if you have a 4. You turn the cards one at a time and have to beat the hand of the player showing. If Ty turned over a Queen to start, I'd have to keep turning over cards until I can beat his Queen. Let's say I have an 8 then a 9, then I'd have a pair of 8s and Slinger would have to turn over his cards one by one until he can beat that hand and so forth. You bet after a player makes a hand and these pots would swell up. It was the highlight of the games and I became a legend at the Trout House for creating the action game 75 Cent Mexican. The guys in the band loved the game so much, that they wrote a song with that title.

In 1998, the film Rounders came out and I saw it three times at the Neptune Theater in Seattle. We introduced Hold'em to our homegame and at first we kept making mistakes on what cards to burn. Yeah we were total rookies, but we thought Rounders was the greatest movie in the history of cinema. Little did I know that the film would affect millions of other poker junkies around the world.

Later that year, Phish played two monster concerts in Las Vegas including one on Halloween when they covered the entire Velvet Underground album Loaded. As soon as the shows were announced, Senor and I both knew we were going. I actually began my Las Vegas book with that scene. What you are about to read has not been seen by anyone, except my assistant Jessica who helped edit the manuscript for me. Enjoy the teaser of the first three paragraphs of my Las Vegas book...

Sometimes you get lucky before you even set foot on a plane bound for Las Vegas. I should have been arrested on the spot at Sea-Tac airport. Instead, I talked my way out of fines and imprisonment. More importantly, I avoided a huge legal tab from a over-priced criminal attorney wearing an off-the-rack suit whose sole job would be to try to find loopholes in my multiple drug possession charges. Sure, my good friend Senor was a high priced attorney in New York City but he had no juice on the left coast. All he could do was pick up the phone and hope that he could find a former law school chum in the greater Seattle area who owed him a favor. Otherwise, I'd be fucked. Properly.

1998. I was a long-haired cynic living in the slacker life Seattle trying to write screenplays while I smoked too much pot, slept with bored housewives from Vashon Island, and sat in bars listening to rambling dissertations from too many West Coast philosopher types, many of which I considered my close friends. That was back in a time way before airports took security seriously and you could travel with a horde of drugs on your person and not think twice about taking the risk. I had an ounce of high grade marijuana in my left pocket. In my right, a half an ounce of magic mushrooms was concealed. My sole job on that particular mission was to bring as many drugs as I could down from Seattle to Las Vegas.

My small backpack was filled with a long sleeve shirt, a Hawaiian shirt, two pairs of underwear, socks, my notebook, two pens, a Spalding Gray book and my toiletries bag. With memories of Billy Hayes stuck in a Turkish Prison from Midnight Express bouncing around my head, I double wrapped the drugs in Ziplock baggies. The mushrooms were small and odorless. That package was about the size of my wallet which I shoved into my front right pocket along with my wallet. The pot reeked. Badly. The more pot stinks, the better it is. I did my best to conceal the smell of some of the best shit I smoked in over a year. That package was about the size of a John Grisham novel. I wore cargo pants and it fit perfectly into one of those enlarged pockets.

As I walked through the metal detector, a guard who looked like Cheech Marin stopped me when the buzzer went off...

... to be continued


Editor's Note: If you have not read the first three installments, then visit Born to Gamble Part I: Where It All Begins, Born to Gamble Part II: Southbound, and Born to Gamble Part III: Midnight Rider. The fifth installment will be published later this week.
posted by Pauly at 6/06/2006 04:20:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Born to Gamble Part III: Midnight Rider

I left Atlanta a couple of months after graduation, with a few grand in my pocket after a successful summer of poker and blackjack. I drove back to New York City without a job, nor a place to live. I really didn't have a clue to what I was going to do with my life. A few months earlier, I applied to NYU film school and I was quickly rejected. The previous summer, I was the ice cream man in Atlanta. I wrote a screenplay that was a taut psychological drama about an ice cream man who couldn't sell ice cream on the hottest day of the year. It was Do the Right Thing meets Taxi Driver and I figured that my cinematic gem was going to get me a scholarship to film school and a three picture deal with Miramax. My screenplay was rejected and so was my dream of going to film school to become the next Richard Linklater or Quentin Tarrantino.

The job market was at an all time low for the mid 1990s and I was one of hundreds of thousands of college grads migrating to NYC to find work. I took my LSATs and did extremely well. I figured law school was a distant option since I had not yet applied. I thought about getting my old job back at the Commodities Exchange, but I was reluctant. I wasn't ready to throw on a suit and tie and my four-year slacker lifestyle seemed more appealing. I took a menial job at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Within a few weeks I met a sultry French chick with big brown eyes and I moved into her loft in Chelsea that was inhabited by rats and her two roommates, both drag queens. I was in a holding pattern until I figured things out, which meant I got shitfaced every night and followed the Grateful Dead around until Jerry Garcia dropped dead.

I grew up in New York City during my childhood, but the city is completely different when you were 21 years old and being reintroduced to it for the first time. I returned just before Giuliani cleaned up the city. There was still a slight edge to it and the cooler parts of town weren't overrun by hipsters, dotcommers, and the Starbuckification of America.

I ran rampant through the streets of my city like a horny Russian sailor on shore leave in Bangkok for 48 hours. I viciously tortured my brain cells and went on a year-long bender that would make Ted Kennedy proud. I spent many late nights getting trashed in dive bars in the East Village and in Brooklyn. I'd puke in between subway cars and pass out on people's couches that I had only met a few hours earlier. I was "young, dumb, and full of cum" and raising hell with some of my co-workers, who were an odd cast of peculiar painters, narcissistic actors, progressive musicians, understated sculptors, and hackneyed poets. They were what and who they wanted to be and didn't let a day job nor society define their existence.

I learned from their devout dedication to their crafts that it was going to be at least ten, possibly twenty years before I began to fully understand and master my craft. I had a life-altering decision to make: if I wanted to be a writer, I had to be willing to choose a life of sacrifice with the knowledge that what I was attempting had astronomical odds against what I was trying to achieve. Millions of people begin their careers trying to do something with their art and talent, but only a small percentage earn a living wage doing it and most of the time it's a sheer compromise that they have to endure in order to earn a living as a writer, painter, or musician.

I also discovered a group of hard-core gamblers at the museum. My friend Marco was a security guard in the Classical European paintings section. He introduced me to OTB's betting by phone feature. We set up and funded my account at the local OTB and then I was able to use their automated system to phone in bets on horse racing. I would do this during work hours! I worked with a lot of union guys who had mob connections. And everyone knows that horse racing is fixed. When we'd get word of a "sure thing," we'd bet heavily on our tip. It only had to hit 1/3 of the time for us to break even.

One day Marco had a tip but didn't have any money in his phone account. He had to go to the OTB and put in the bet directly, so he called his supervisor and told him that he was taking a ten minute bathroom break. He left his post in the Caravaggio Room at the museum, hailed a cab on Fifth Avenue and told the driver to take him to the nearest OTB 15 blocks away. He jumped out, placed the bet, then jumped back into the cab and ran back into the museum. He returned thirty minutes later dripping in sweat. When his supervisor wondered where he went, he explained that his trip to the bathroom turned into a nasty case of explosive diarrhea and was stuck shitting his brains out.

I met another guy who ran the football betting slips ring and sold dime bags of weed on the side. I'd gamble with the same parlay slips that my father had given me ten years earlier. I also worked with a bookie, and I bet on college basketball and pro football. I would classify my sports betting as moderate to low at the time. Living in NYC was expensive especially since I went out to party every night.

My buddy Stormy (who just won a seat in this year's WSOP main event) and I would organize poker games with some of the security guards. We'd play at Marco's apartment in Peter Cooper Village or at my apartment in Park Slope. I introduced Four Barrel to the home game and they were hooked along with other games such as Acey Deucey. The games started out low stakes and by the end of the night it would get ugly when we'd play Four Barrel. There was a group of seven or eight of us that rotated in and out of that game for over a year. I won more than I lost and the games were more social than competitive.

I also heard about the illegal poker rooms for the first time although I never played. I went to one once with Marco around Union Square. He went a few times with one of the ex-cops who worked security at the museum. It was a private club and you could not get in without being introduced by a member. Marco just got his membership card and was going to get me one. They only had one table running (Seven-card Stud) and we didn't want to wait. I never went back.

Around that time I started going to Atlantic City to play blackjack. It was a two hour bus ride from Manhattan and we'd arrive around Midnight. I counted cards and Stormy, Marco, and I would buy $25 roundtrip bus tickets to AC. They'd give us $20 in free play at the casino and we discovered a scam where we could cash it out at Sands, so the roundtrip would only cost us $5. We'd play blackjack all night and comeback the next morning.

I first sat down at a poker table at the Taj Mahal because I was down to my last $30 after getting seriously cold-decked at the blackjack tables. While I waited for the next bus back to the city, I sat down at a $1-3 Seven-card Stud table where I was about forty years younger than the other players. Since the Taj's poker room was close to the exit, I could step outside and smoke a couple hits off of a blunt and not miss too many hands. I'd joke around with the infamous Atlantic City hookers who mingled in the same area. That's when one lady of the night uttered one of my favorite phrases that I have ever heard from a hooker, "Honey, if you wanna fuck Big Momma, you better wear a space suit," as she lifted up her pink mini-skirt and pointed to her crotch, "Cause you ain't getting out of this black hole alive."

I had no clue what I was doing at the tables since I never read a poker book. I played by instincts. I had home-game experience where we played Stud frequently. With an excellent memory, almost photographic, I could easily memorize what cards were already out. I relied on my ability to read people and had no knowledge of advanced concepts. I played fairly tight because I didn't have much money to gamble with, so I didn't play too many pots.

At first I didn't understand the commonality of tipping poker dealers. Like blackjack, I would tip out a dealer when they left the table. Fortunate for me, the other players at my table were friendly and clued me in on the proper etiquette. Some of the WWII vets gave me free advice on playing Stud, like how I should always complete my bet with an ace out there and about not giving other players on a draw free cards.

After a year of heavy partying, I grew tired of living the hungover life of the village drunk from an Irish novel. I eventually decided that I wasn't willing to fight the overwhelming odds to try to be a writer. I was at a fork in the road, and took the easy way out. I became a suit and quickly found myself trading bonds for a brokerage firm located on Wall Street.

Part of that decision to head to Wall Street was due to the fallout over horrible relationships that I had with two particular women during my first year living in New York City. Frustrated, heartbroken, and lacking any self-worth, I needed something to take my mind off of the misery. Long hours in the trenches trading New Jersey sewer bonds provided that escape.

I always fall for the wrong women. I should know better, but I can't stop it. I have a weakness for emotionally disturbed women. I barely survived the hellish period when I lived with a self-hating, chain-smoking, French painter. Then I dated a strung-out, chain-smoking, Belorussian model. One despised men so much that I wondered why she wasn't a lesbian. And the other one was so fucked up in the head and mercilessly addicted to cocaine that she made me seem like Richie Cunningham to her Courtney Love. Of course we ran off to Jamaica together to live in Paradise but that didn't work out very well. You can read about that drama in my book Gumbo. Here's an excerpt:

"I massaged Natasha's smooth hair and she rushed in for a kiss. I brushed her left cheek with my hand and she took it and kissed my fingers one by one. She closed her eyes and inserted two fingers into her soft mouth and began slowly sucking them. When someone knocked on the locked bathroom door, she clamped down hard and bit me. I screamed and with my first impulse, I punched her in the head with my free hand and pulled my fingers to safety. She laughed as I inspected my right hand and saw teeth marks impressed into my flesh, but no blood..."

I was a scorned lover, dead broke, and my soul was bankrupt. I was a perfect candidate to be brainwashed and I quickly fit in. I was recognized as the best trader in my class and won Rookie of the Year at my firm. I don't think I was exceptional, rather I got lucky and put in rigorous hours, upwards to 80+ a week including Sundays.

The financial markets are a form of legalized gambling. You're speculating the future. I got paid to gamble... with other people's money. And it was tons of fun except when I was wrong which happened more often than not. The rush was overwhelming and the work was exhilarating. In many ways I miss those aspects of my day, when you get so jacked up on adrenaline that it feels like you are floating several feet off the ground.

The guys in my office were smug assholes. In many ways, they deserved that right to be cocky. What they did mattered much more than the other suits and skirts scattered in offices and cubicles all over Manhattan pushing paper, where a bad day for them was getting chewed out by their boss or blowing a sales presentation. In the trenches on Wall Street, a slip up could cost millions of dollars. People get whacked for those sorts of mistakes. An error in judgment by a rogue trader or broker could ruin an entire company or an entire country. Yeah, the guys I worked with were pompous snobs. They thought they were Gods among men. Big Swinging Dicks. Masters of the Universe. And I was one of them.

... to be continued


Editor's Note: If you have not read the first two installments, then visit Born to Gamble Part I: Where It All Begins and Born to Gamble Part II: Southbound. The fourth installment will be published later this week.
posted by Pauly at 6/04/2006 10:21:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Big Pimpin' and Quckies with Gapped Toothed Hookers

Thanks to Craig Tapscott for mentioning the Tao of Poker in his Fox Sports article called Poker 411: Best Information on the Web. He's been writing the majority of the poker content over there, so take a peek.

June is here and I couldn't be more elated, like a horny puppy humping the living room couch leg for the first time. I took the month off from covering poker tournaments to rest up for the WSOP. I'm embarking on a few side trips with music as my main motivation to hit the road and travel to Tennesse, Colorado, and California. Spaceman will be in Las Vegas covering the WPT Mandalay Bay next week. Stop by Bluff Magazine and follow his tournament coverage.

At the end of this month, I officially move to Las Vegas to cover the WSOP on the Tao of Poker along with providing content for LasVegasVegas, Poker Player Newspaper, and whoever else wants to purchase my blood work. I'd hate to dissapoint all you Redneck Riviera fans, but I will not be returning to Hell's waiting room. I'll will be living in Henderson as Grubby's roommate.

May was "berry berry goot to me." I'm finally unstuck for the year after a horrible start. I'm proud to admit that I'm a winning poker player again. For now. Over the last 35 days of play, I posted wins in 28 of them. Party Poker ressurected my bankroll. My hot streak covered all my loses on Full Tilt and Poker Stars combined. I cashed out profits on Party Poker twice this month. I have not done that in over a year.

90% of my online poker time is grinding away at the Limit Hold'em tables at Party. The other 10% of the time I'm fucking around. Party Poker saved my life. My bankroll. My sanity.

* * * * *
I've read several books over the past three weeks from Chuck Klosterman, Anne Lamott, Charles Bukowski, Neal Pollock, and three books from Alan Watts. I'm in the middle of reading Blue Blood by Edward Conlon, who is curently a NYPD detective. He went to my high school but graduated seven years earlier so we have never met. I ran cross country track with his younger brother. Conlon, who graduated from Harvard, grew up a few blocks from me in an adjoining neighborhood in the Bronx.

In Blue Blood, Conlon describes the gritty routine of being a beat cop under the worst conditions in a housing project in the Bronx as he weaves in NYC politics and what it was like to work under Rudy Guiliani. The first hundred pages covers his first two years on the force. You'll read about how thugs in the projects throw bricks and cans of spam at him from the roof. You'll also read about how he tackled and arrested a serial rapist who had been preying on women in their 60s and 70s. In one of the more gut wrenching scenes, he struggles to interviews a ten year old rape victim. The last hundred pages or so discusses his time at Ground Zero after 9.11 when he joined the bucket brigades looking for survivors.

* * * * *
Been working on Coventry, my music blog where Frankl is a contributor. I posted blurbs on bands such as Rose Hill Drive, Galactic, Particle, Lotus, Trey Anastasio & Mike Gordon with the Duo, Ben Harper, and The Grateful Dead. Frankl wrote a review of the George Clinton and P-Funk show in Denver.

On the poker front, I wrote a piece over at the Poker Prof's blog called Pauly's Picks: Las Vegas Poker.

Also, check out Flipchip's latest entry The New and Improved 2006 World Series of Poker.

Congrats to Double As, Grubby, Stormy, and Coach.

DoubleAs finally got his poker book off the ground. I helped write two sections! Stay tuned for more details.

Grubby finally picked up a tournament win! I talked to him for about 90 minutes yesterday and he also told me the story on how he turned $40 into $1100 on Full Tilt playing NL ring games. Stop by his blog the Poker Grub to read about out how a hooker brightened his day.

My buddy Stormy won a seat to the WSOP main event via PokerStars. We used to play cards together over ten years ago in homegames in my apartment in Park Slope and at another guy's place in Peter Cooper Village.

Coach from the Blue Parrot is playing for a seat in ESPN's Main Event tournament, which is basically 600 entrants vying for one free seat to the WSOP Main Event. To get there, he came in second in an 1016 person MTT two weeks ago, and then finished in the top 25 of a "Sunday Qualifier" over Memorial Day weekend to get that seat.

I heard that Vanessa Rousso got picked up by PokerStars, her new sponsor. I wonder who she had to blow to get that? I mean, I blew Otis and all I got was a lousy T-Shirt and a cold sore that still hasn't gone away.

Derek just booked his flight to Vegas in July and I booked us rooms at the Castle during the WPBT Summer Classic. Visit April's blog for more details.

If you haven' t done so, stop by and read FTrain's gem Luck You, then follow the trail of other posts on luck starting with Scuvy Dog's coda on luck.

HDouble published his quarterly treatise called The Phoenix Riddle Hath More Wit By Us and Monk is posting there now too.

Check out Ryan's series: The Suicide Pact, Part I and Part II.

Wicked Chops posted two hilarious things: Top 10 People Who Hate WCP Part I and Part II.

Lastly, thanks to the Top 10 Tao of Poker refferals for the month of May (in alphabetical order)... Aaron Gleeman, Amy Calistri, Change100, Double As, Drizz, Iggy, Maudie, Poker Prof, Tao of Pauly, and Up for Poker.

Be back Monday with Born to Gamble Part III.
posted by Pauly at 6/02/2006 06:36:00 PM | Permalink |