14 More Fun Moments from the 2010 WSOP

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA


Photo by Flipchip
The memory is a funny thing. Depending on your mood, you can focus on the light or darkness of a situation. Sometimes when you rewind a situation in your head, it's fuzzy. Other times it's as vivid as HD and you're locked into your consciousness at the present moment. But after you get shellshocked and spend seven weeks in one place (not to mention six WSOPs), some of the experience bleeds together. Thanks God for electronic documentation -- Tao of Poker and @taopauly on Twitter (and to a lesser degree, my Twit pics) -- because they can fill in the gaps where my memory goes blank. Sometimes it only takes a keyword or two to trigger a memory. On the contrary, sometimes I'll re-read an old notebook and flip through the pages and wonder what the fuck I wanted to say when I have a couple of unrelated words. Obviously, those keywords failed to trigger a memory or illicit an emotion.

Anyway, last week I posted about 14 fun memories from the 2010 WSOP that popped into my head as I quickly jotted them down. Each of the 14 bullet points could have trigger its own essay -- a few could even inspire a screenplay, a 17,000 word David Foster Wallace-esqu essay (with 4,200 words of footnotes), or in the case of Lesbian Kisses, a piece of gonzo porn.

With that said, here's a few that popped into my head shortly after chatting with some friends about the original (14) fun moments. Again, these are in no specific order, rather, it's just what I see when I close my eyes and play "Press Your Luck" with my memory banks. All of these images are rapidly flickering and I yell, "No Whammmmies! Stop!" And then this is what I get...

1. A couple of colleagues in the pressbox were on a baking kick. Kudos to Laney, Jess, and Gloria for sharing their home-baked goodies with the members of the press. Sweet treats go a long way.

2. Ty Stewart set aside an entire box of Jack Links Beef Jerky for me to share with the press box. We had a love/hate relationship with the jerky. In a pinch, the bags were a godsend.

3. I threw out my back in the press box. I was out of pharmies but luckily Matt Waldron cracked my back and Friedman scrounged up a few Percs for me.

4. The Grinder won the 50K Horse event to bail him out of trouble with the tax man, but more importantly, I saw Patrik Antonius (The Grinder's backer) actually smile when he shook his hand when the final table was finally set.

5. David Benyamine so concerned with losing a prop bet against Tom Dwan, that he spent a significant time sweating Durrrr on the rail.

6. After a month of tilt-inducing delays, the proofs of Lost Vegas finally arrived. Kara Scott bought a copy of Lost Vegas and spent Day 1 of the Main Event with the book underneath her chair.


7. Scoring VIP access to see Snoop perform at the PokerStars party.

8. Writing about Arvidas was one of my favorite pieces of the WSOP. I pissed off a few suits so I must have been doing something right.

8. Inspired by a picture of Winnie the Pooh beheading Eeyore, I wrote about the Scandi mafia and the comet that wiped out all the donkeys from the face of Rio.

9. Old lady with a disposable camera asked me to take a photo of that "jerk" Phil Hellmuth. Oh, speaking of grandmother types... a sweet old lady did some shit talking with Durrrr.

10. Appearing on the inaugural episode of This Week in Poker. I opened up for Jen Tilly...



11. Schwasted girls wandering down the hallway at 2:40am. Change100 saw one puke in a garbage can.

12. Mickey Doft's story about Phil Ivey's hoodie.

13. A well-dressed Gavin Smith won his first bracelet.


14. During the final table bubble for the November Nine, people were passed out all over the Amazon Ballroom -- including media row, the pressbox, the stands around the final table and the spillover area.

Just in case you haven't seen it, here's the original 14 Fun Moments from the 2010 WSOP.

Here's an index of Tao of Poker's 2010 WSOP coverage.