Jim Boeheim Plays Poker

A twitter user named @rockymtnpro spotted Jim Boeheim at the Wynn Poker room.

Apparently Boeheim was playing 1-3 No Limit Hold Em with great luck and questionable skill.
According to the twitter traffic, he cracked kings twice in one orbit.
On one hand he defended his big blind with 10-deuce to a 5x raise. He called a 25 dollars c-bet after flopping a ten, and he open-jammed for 113 dollars on the turn 2. The player with the kings called. First off, I can't imagine him being a very balanced player since he favors the same strategy in all situations, all the time. Second, I don't think he would have a very good poker face.

The Most Dickish Thing I've Ever Done (But It Was Hilarious)

I recently went to Atlantic City for the PokerStars Festival, a series of tournaments meant to promote poker now that PokerStars offers online play in my home state.
Because Resorts, which partners with PokerStars, doesn't have a poker room, the tournaments were held in a ballroom. As I walked through the tables I saw some well-known players sitting amongst regular folks aka amateurs.
I also recognized a friend of mine, Andy, and on his direct right was Barry Greenstein, peacefully reading news articles on his iPad.
I noticed Andy, whom I had never met in person, only online, was wearing a tank top that said "If you're offended, I'll help you pack" and had a big American flag in the middle.

Turns out two other friends (I use the term loosely) paid him $100 each to wear the shirt the entire day. As I was being told this story, I was inches from Barry Greenstein who looked up at me, and then I said:

"Barry, they're paying him $200 to wear this shirt. How much are they paying you to wear that sweater?"

Luckily it was well-received and when I saw him sitting alone later (he remained at his table during a break) I went over and apologized and we had a good laugh. He took it very well. And then we briefly talked about politics. He couldn't have been nicer. And I couldn't have been more dickish.

Pissed Off

Poker legend Antonio Esfandiari was disqualified from a poker tournament for urinating at the table.
Esfandiari was involved in a large prop bet (rumored to be $50,000) with hedge fund manager and poker whale Bill Perkins.
Starting at midnight on Saturday, Esfandiari could not walk, he had to lunge everywhere for the next 48 hours.

He spent most of the first day lunging to the bathroom in his hotel room.
But Day 2 he had to play the $5,000 buy-in Main Event at the PCA (Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure).
He was allowed to take the shuttle from his hotel to where the tournament was being held, but had to lunge all the way to his table.
Well that walk evidently took a lot out of him, because at least 8 hours later his legs were so shot that he didn't think he could make it to the bathroom and back.
He got a bottle, a towel and a bunch of people to stand around him.
Someone saw, and he was disqualified from the tournament for "a major breach of etiquette."
Afterwards Antonio was apologetic. But not sorry for waiting out the rest of the bet on a couch with Sarah Herring.

Those Aren't Brains

Pokernews.com's Caitlyn Howe interviewed poker player Jonathan Jaffe after day 3 of WPT Montreal, an event he went on to win.
Clearly Howe was not hired because of her poker knowledge, her reporting skills and certainly not her bullshit detector.



"I'm working for the core of engineers in Vermont, I'm studying, there's an indigenous population of squirrels that are being eaten by a new invasive species of bird."
"That's incredible. What a virtuous pursuit."

There are two big reasons she got the job. You can see them here.



And here.



But she was not the only one to get duped by Jaffe. The ESPN crew (technically an outside production company working in association with ESPN) broadcasting the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event got fooled.



Jaffe ended up finishing 42nd and ESPN eventually admitted its gaffe in not fact checking Jaffe and not giving the photoshopped picture of him feeding a dolphin closer inspection.

Enough about him, this post is really about Caitlyn Howe.

What Do You Give Me For? Sean Dempsey and Johnny Galecki

What do you give me for the 27th place finisher in the 2014 World Series of Poker Main Event Sean Dempsey and Big Bang Theory's Johnny Galecki?

Note: I couldn't find a good picture of Johnny Galecki to really make this work. As Leonard Hofstadter he has the glasses but not the beard, as himself he has had a beard, but not the glasses. But if you cover the picture on the right I'd bet your mental picture of Johnny Galecki is closer to Dempsey than the one I found on Google images.

Funny or Douchey?

Dan Heimiller won the $1,000 Seniors Event at the World Series of Poker for $627,000. Nothing douchey about that.
He did it while wearing a T-shirt that says "Winner! Winner! Chicken Dinner!"

Even that, I wouldn't say is douchey.
A long time ago Papa Poop told me about a guy he played blackjack with in Atlantic City. Every time the guy got an ace he said "king of hearts." After 20 times, he finally got the king of hearts and said he called it.
That's what Heimiller does with the shirt. He wears it every single time in the hopes of finally winning?
Is that douchey?

Double Trouble

Ultimate Poker in another player-friendly promotion, has rolled out something they call "NO-verlay." If any tournament with a guaranteed prize pool, actually meets its guarantee, everyone gets their buy-in refunded.
At first the promotion didn't catch on, only a few tournaments were going freeroll. But as the promotion entered its third week, word spread, players got wise and now every tournament is filling up. The $100 buy-in Sunday tournament was free, the $50 nightly has been free about 8 - 10 days in a row, and the $10 and $20 buy-ins that start later and are accessible to me, have also been free just about every night over the past two weeks.
As you would imagine I have been trying to play as many of these tournaments as possible to maximize my value. At first I wasn't doing very well in these free tournaments, but I've recently hit a string of luck, cashing 3 times in 4 days in the $20 buy-in ($244, $125 and $29) but last night was my biggest score yet.

I started at 9pm with the $10 buy-in $750 GTD Rebuy and Addon. I did not rebuy or add on (because those are not refunded). I got down to a short stack early and decided to shove with A7. I got called by AK and hit two 7s on the flop. A few hands later I shoved A8 suited (still short stacked) and again beat AK, this time with an 8 on the river.
The rest of the way I played good solid poker, took a couple bad beats, got lucky in a couple spots, and ended up winning a very brief heads up match.

In the meantime I was also playing the $500 GTD turbo, $10 buy-in. Blinds go up twice as fast and it pretty much becomes all-in or fold after the first few levels, if you are short stacked. Which I was when I picked up A10. As I tried to click all-in, I got disconnected. I had to reset my router and by the time I did, my A10 had been mucked. That might have been the luckiest thing that happened all night because after that I went on a heater and ended up shipping this one too.

A nice $600 to add to the pile, and I'm hoping to add a few more before this great money giveaway ends.

The Things We Do For TON

The poker site I use, Ultimate Poker (benefactors of my $1000 score), is owned by the same company as UFC, as the name would indicate.
Because the site is newly opened to NJ players, and UFC 169 is in New Jersey it only makes that it would give away some tickets to the event to online players.
UFC and Ultimate Poker went big, putting 1,000 pairs of tickets on the line. There are quite a lot of ways to win including winning pretty much any tournament on the site in January, or some random draws on their Facebook page and lots of other ways. Each of the Ultimate Pros had 3 pairs to give away to twitter followers who do certain things like make a video, or do something for charity, or say what you would do with a million dollars.
None of those was up my alley, so I went after Brent Hanks.
He was awarding tickets for the best joke tweeted with the hashtag "makeBrentlaugh."

But here's the problem: UFC 169 is February 1st. The same day as Duke's first trip to the Carrier Dome to play Syracuse. So I can't go. So I will give the tickets* to my only other friend who follows UFC.

You're welcome big TON.

*-assuming there is no fine print about the tickets being non-transferrable. *-assuming if anything cool happens he takes pictures and does a guest post about it.

Ship the Cheese

The Poop is poker's newest thousandaire.

Here's the explanation: holiday promotion by Ultimate Poker. A nightly $1 buy-in tournament, with $1000 guaranteed for first place. They call it the Thousandaire!
Not only did I win the tournament I did it while fighting with Julian to eat dinner, then putting them to bed, including pajamas and teeth-brushing (no story, though). I even had Chase reading my cards to me and pressing fold while I wiped Julian's ass.
I did get lucky in some spots (bottom set vs top 2 and top-top was the hand that really propelled me) but I never had a blatant suckout, and during heads up (with a $967 pay jump) I played great, pounding on my opponent until I got him down 2 to 1 and finally put him away with 8s vs 7s.

This means a lot to me because I can now play cash games and tournaments without really worrying about what it will do to my bankroll. It also feels great because I have tried really hard at poker for a long time and never had any major success. Now I am surely a lifetime winner at poker and hopefully better things lay ahead.
But more importantly I set a great example for my children (Chase is gonna love it), that if you want to be good at something you work hard, you believe in yourself and you can accomplish great things!

What Do You Give Me For? Ryan Riess and Dirk Nowitzki

What do you give me for World Series of Poker Main Event Champion Ryan Riess (Da Beast) and Dirk Nowitzki

Bill Simmons gets the credit for this because he was the first one to say it publicly, but I know a lot of people were thinking it.

He Says It Better

There were three general reactions to my post about my poker winnings: some of you (Mrs. Poop) didn't read it because it was too long, some of you (Jems) enjoyed it because it was long and some of you (TallSkott) didn't read it, because it was too long but said you did.
For everyone other than Jems, this is for you. What I conveyed in 1,700 words more eloquently put in 7 words, by Chau Giang:



"Poker is nice. I love play poker."

A Sense of Accomplishment

Ten years ago Chris Moneymaker won the Main Event of the World Series of Poker and started a poker boom. I got swept up in it. I watched every poker show I could find. I read every update of every World Series of Poker event. I follow every well known player on twitter. I had two stints of real money fun while online poker was still legal, the second much more spectacular, and eventually painful than the first. And I had a few mostly losing sessions on the felt in Atlantic City and Las Vegas.
But I always knew I could play this game. I had the math skills, the smarts, the competitiveness and the understanding of game theory. What I didn't have was the emotional makeup to keep my composure at the table (especially online when bad beats are doled out like anonymous insults and no one -- except Mrs. Poop -- is around to hear you scream at the computer) when things went wrong, as they so often do.
Poker is a game of adversity, and the best way to find success is to choose the right playing style and never deviate from it (too much) when you are winning -- or losing, especially losing.
They say you need 10,000 hours doing something before you even have hope of mastering it, and I may have passed that threshold sometime this year.
I went to Foxwoods earlier this year with Mrs. Poop and booked small wins in two cash game sessions. I went to Sands in Bethlehem, PA and booked a triple-digit win a few weeks after that.
And since Mrs. Poop went to Connecticut with the kids and dog for a birthday party and I stayed home to go to Syracuse-Penn State on Saturday, I used my Sunday to head back to the Sands for a few hours of poker.
I won't go through all the hands (though I can, so if you want to hear more of that just e-mail me, I have details of many of them in texts to TallSkott) but I did not get off to a good start. I got sucked out on twice (KQ lost to K8 when an 8 hit the river and A7<10-4 when a ten hit the river to make him a better two pair) and then I got bluffed out of a huge pot (K9 on 3-3-9-K-2 board, he called 15 on the flop, 20 on the turn and I checked to him on the river and he bet 75), all in the first half hour.
I was down to about 65 from my starting stack of 200 and questioning whether I wanted to throw another 100 on top or leave after only an hour.
I don't remember how it happened, except I got aces and kept betting and they kept calling, and I hit a couple other nice hands, but I knew I was playing great. I didn't get exceptionally lucky at any point deep in a hand where I was behind, but I kept folding losers and getting paid on winners.
But before I go any further I want to fill you in on an amazing hand that almost happened. Most poker rooms have something called a bad beat jackpot. It varies but the general concept is, if you have quads and lose, that's good for the jackpot. The money is split 50% to the losing player (the recipient of the bad beat), 25% to the winner, and 25% to split among the other players at the table. I've seen bad beat jackpots of more than $200,000, in this case it was $84,000, and we almost got it. The board was showing Ace-Jack-ten of diamonds, plus some blank, and the river card was another jack. The river action was fast and furious and we were sure someone had pocket jacks and someone else had a flush. For the guy with the flush to be that aggressive on a paired board meant that he at least had the nut flush (king of diamonds and any other diamond), or so we thought but when he turned over 9-8 of diamonds everyone including the dealer gasped. 4 cards to a straight flush, and they other guy had quad jacks.
We didn't get the bad beat jackpot and I didn't even experience another bad beat the rest of the day. Or any beat really. I just kept dumping losing hands and whenever I got something I bet it. As my chip stack started to grow, players starting folding more to my aggression. And as they folded more, I got more aggressive. Eventually with two players leaving (one really good, one really lucky) I became the big stack (double anyone else) and began to assert myself even more.
I was sitting in the 10 seat to the right of the dealer, and right behind the little display that shows all the players' names once their cards have been swiped. I actually liked that spot because of that and because it gave me a little more room without a player on my left.
The only problem was it left my card protector, one of Chase's Lego minfigs (in this case the paintball player who Chase once described as "shooting paint out of his balls"), in the line of fire, dealers pitching the cards were constantly grazing my little talisman, one guy saying "good thing he's wearing a helmet" and a cute Asian female saying "I'm wacking the shit out of that little guy."
My lucky #10 seat also gave me a good vantage point for a near fight. Seats 3 and 4 (Jeffrey and Frank I think) got into it after seat 3 raised to $7 (a raise of $5 since the big blind was $2) and seat 4 tried to call, but grabbed two reds and one white ($11) instead of one red and two whites ($7). We all knew he had made a mistake but the rule says he can't take back his bet because he bet more than half of a min-raise which would have been $5. So he was forced to raise (they made him raise to $14 which was a mistake but got lost in all the excitement) and he was pissed. He yelled at the dealer, saying it was just a mistake and he's dealt to him before and should have known it was a mistake. The dealer told him he knew it was a mistake but it is his job to enforce the rules of the card room which are designed to prevent dealers from having to make such judgment calls. The hand played out uneventfully but while the next hand was being dealt seat 4 continued to bellyache about it. He just wanted to have his say, but seat 3 had heard enough in his ear and told him he'd heard enough and that he was wrong and should stop bitching about it.
Eventually this led a shouting match ("shut up" "what are you going do about it" "shut the fuck up" "you're not gonna do anything you fuckin pussy"), with their faces getting closer and closer. I tried to yell at them, I think I said "hey knock it off guys" (maybe I should have given them the pseudonyms Chase and Julian) but that didn't work and the dealer had to call over the floor. If you've watched enough World Series of Poker you've seen the floor intervene in disputes from time to time and like me you may have noticed that they never try to soothe the situation, they usually just yell louder, threaten and hope to scare the players into behaving. That's exactly what happened here. The floor came over and got right in between the two players who at this time were manager-umpire-bad-call close to each other. He couldn't settle them down so he went to the dealer for an explanation. The dealer didn't include the detail that seat 3 really had done nothing wrong except lacking patience for the ranting lunatic on his left. So the floor went back around the table and screamed at both guys to "squash it" or be ejected from the poker room. At no time did he treat the combatants like valued customers at his establishment. But his aggressive approach worked, as both players calmed immediately and there were no further outbursts. Seat 4 seemed to realize he had overreacted and issued a half-hearted apology which was more like him once again defending his actions.
He didn't say anything else until about half an hour later when I won a big hand with a flopped set of 4s on a scary board (diamond draw) against two players with 2 pair.
He said "this guy doesn't say anything, he just flops sets, and boats (I'd held pocket 5s on an 8-8-5 flop for a sizable pot before the fight) and doesn't say anything, he just sits there and collects."
I just smiled at him and stacked my chips which at this point had ballooned to 6 perfect stacks of 20 red $5 chips.

After about 8 1/2 hours at the table, I decided to leave, one hand too late as I bluffed off about $45 on my last hand with A-5 suited.
Still I booked a profit of $375 and needed two racks to carry all my chips to the cage. And considering all the tips $1 for a winning hand, $2 for a big pot, $3 for the one monster I raked, plus $4 for drinks and $8 for a bowl of soup, including tip (it was freezing in there, never again shorts and t-shirt, never again) I probably won closer to $425.
And the money is nice of course, but the real reward is the pride and the good feelings I got from playing so well, conquering my personal demons of impatience and frustration and battling back from a short stack to become the monster chip leader and table captain. And the realization that something I have devoted many hours to with little or no financial or emotional reward, may finally be starting to pay off.
I may have turned the corner and gone from recreational player with a 50/50 shot of winning depending on the cards, to becoming an excellent player who is no longer gambling, just pushing an edge, because I may actually be pretty good at this.

I Have an Eye For Talent

Very early on in the career of Jon Bones Jones, after I knew he had two brothers at Syracuse, and after I'd seen him fight a couple times, I knew he was destined for greatness. Jones has fulfilled his promise so now I'm on to a new prodigy.
Just hours after I wrote about the great World Series of Poker Loni Harwood was having, the Staten Island native took her seat in the final $1500 No Limit Hold Em event of the summer.
Two days later, Harwood took down the bracelet and the $609,000 first prize, pushing her total winnings for the summer to roughly $875,000.

Thanks to her victory in this event, I was able to learn a little more about her through this WSOP interview. She is born and raised in Staten Island but after college moved to Miami (that explains the Heat hat). But I still don't know why Staten Island Advance hasn't done a story on her yet. Maybe this (plus my e-mails and tweets) will get their attention).

Here's Harwood's winner interview with the very lovely Lynn Gilmartin.



Maybe she was just nervous but girls from Staten Island usually talk a lot more than this.

Just for the record, Harwood did get very lucky to win this event. She was all in with 7 players left holding AK against her opponent's pocket aces. But she caught a queen and a jack on the flop and a 10 on a river. She didn't mention that particular hand in the interview but did acknowledge "a lot of rungood." But in this event and in the previous one when she finished 4th, I noticed excellent, aggressive play from her.

Very impressed with her play and happy to call her my homegirl.

Baddest Bitch in Poker

I've been following this year's World Series of Poker very closely and one player who caught my eye is 23-year-old Loni Harwood. Though she didn't win a bracelet she did make 2 Final Tables taking 6th in a $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha-8 for $39,000 and then a 4th in a $1,500 No Limit Hold Em for $210,000.
Most interesting to me is that Harwood is from Staten Island. And though she wears a Miami Heat hat all the time (though not the same one), she certainly plays like someone from Staten Island. She has pulled off several daring bluffs which would be impressive for any player, but are especially noteworthy because she is a woman, who for lack of a better term, plays like a man.
I have been trying to find out more info on Harwood, such as what neighborhood she's from and what high school she went to, but information on the internet is scarce, and the Staten Island Advance doesn't seem to be aware of her existence. I did e-mail the sports editor there to try to get an article written about her, so we will see if that happens.
If not, we'll just have to hope she wins the Main Event so we can get some positive coverage about our wonderful island.

He Hates Jack-King Off

2004 World Series of Poker Main Event Champion Greg Raymer was arrested in a prostitution sting in Wake Forest, NC. The men were lured to the hotel by an ad on a website often used by hookers.



We don't have anymore info about how it all went down, but I assume it was something like we see on "To Catch a Predator." The guys set up a date online with someone they believed to be a hooker (of age) and when they got there, cops were waiting for them.

Raymer, also known as Fossilman, won $5M in the first Main Event after the poker boom, and finished 25th the next year, which is quite an accomplishment, with the help of his goofy holographic glasses.



I did a Zillow search for his house. He paid $1.539M for a 6,500 sq ft home in Raleigh. Looks like it is right on a golf course.

Return to the Scene

After causing a near panic at the casino by suggesting a group of old men and I would burn down the place with a pair of hot dice, I had stayed away from Foxwoods for more than 7 years.
But Mrs. Poop found a weekend with nothing to do so we planned a romantic getaway into the Connecticut tribal lands. We left the kids with Mem and Poppy and landed at Foxwoods at about 2pm Saturday. We checked in but were told our room wouldn't be available for an hour, so we gave the front desk our phone number and gave the bellman our baggage and walked away. We didn't get far before the phone rang, our room was ready. Kind of annoying, but nice to get into our room early. Though I had to pay the bellman a dollar to hold our bags for literally 2 minutes.
Mrs. Poop had a spa treatment (if you want to know about her pedicure you'll have to send a separate e-mail) so I had about three hours to play poker. I saw Paul Pierce putting his name on the list, later on I would see James Woods, the actor. Both apparently frequent the Foxwoods Poker room. At my table, I got an unfortunate seat draw and sat on the direct right of a really good player with a huge chip stack. He kept bullying me and my tight style encouraged this. I did get him for a couple small pots, and eventually got one big pot when I hit trip kings on the turn. I may have overbet the river costing me some value but at one point I had more than doubled my $200 buy-in. I lost most of that in a hand with the bully, I played it right until the river when he raised me, I should have folded, but I paid him an extra $55.
I still booked a $40 win, not bad.



Then I went back to the room to get ready for dinner at Cedars steakhouse. We had to wait 20 minutes after our reservation time before we got seated. But when we finally did we were taken to a lovely table in a backroom right next to a knob that controlled the volume of the background music. I was very tempted to blast it up to ten and see what happens, but as I found out, loudness is not tolerated well at this restaurant.



I had a delightful bowl of lobster bisque and a great surf n turf. Mrs. Poop enjoyed the french onion soup and the baked stuff shrimp.



As we were finishing our meal a group of 6 or 7 women, ages spanning the 30s and 40s, came into this little area which contained two large tables and two tables for 2. The women were being very loud, bickering with each other, and arguing with the wait staff, complaining the waitress read the specials too quietly and too quickly. And some of them were clearly intoxicated. So drunk, in fact, that one of them stumbled into the manager on her way into the restaurant. At that point the manager decreed that at least two of the women should not be served alcohol. When they were told this they freaked out. If they were loud before, now they were screaming demanding to see the manager. He told them it was his decision and it would not change, they stormed out but not before saying "we were going to spend 500 dawllors!" On the way out one of the older, more mature members of the party asked us "how bad were they?" We said "pretty loud" and she apologized and left. But she had to come back not once, but twice more because the drunkest, loudest, most obnoxious woman had lost her eyeglasses, which were eventually found under the table. Embarrassing to storm out of a restaurant then have to come back to retrieve your lost property.
The wait staff and the manager apologized profusely to us (didn't discount our bill, it really wasn't that bad) and we told them they did the right thing and then we got the hell out of there because we were meeting friends anyway.
Mrs. Poop went off to play slots with her friend, and I went to play poker with her husband. We actually got seats at the same table with only one very chatty guy in between us. The first hand I guess I was rushed and opened my hand sloppily and he saw my hole cards. He told me that he saw them and made a big deal out of how nice a guy he is but if he sees him again he's not going to tell me. I only get one warning. I was more careful after that but he still insisted he could see my cards. Now, I don't doubt that I am not super careful about peeking at my hand but for him to have seen it he had to be looking for it. Anyway, he didn't beat me a pot the whole time so it didn't much matter. I won a huge pot with the nuts, but I misread the board and called the river, instead of raising, technically against the rules. I also made a straight flush, my first ever in live poker, but couldn't get any action. I got chastised for not checking it, but thought my opponent was more likely to call a bet than to make one himself. For the session I booked another small profit.
At one point a very hot girl in a very short dress was over by the cashout window. Chatty Guy kept talking about her, even making our female dealer very uncomfortable, though she tried to fit in by saying "I like looking at pretty things." This prompted Chatty Guy to compare this hot chick to a car "I like going to the showroom but I always go back to my car. She's got a few dents and scratches but I love her. Plus cars like that require a lot of maintenance."
Later as I was explaining Chatty Guy and the hot chick to Mrs. Poop and her friend, that hot chick walked right by us. And Mrs. Poop agreed she was hot, dressed slutty and probably a lot of work and money to maintain.
We walked around played slots and I even got in on a craps table. I had a decent roll going until the pit boss coolered me. He told me to make sure the dice hit the back wall. I did, it bounced oddly and I sevened out. Not before booking a small win. See a pattern?
The next morning I woke up early played in a poker tournament, $60 buyin, about 50 players total, I had good cards early, nothing late, blinds rose very quickly so I had to push all in with top pair (queens) and a weak kicker and got called by a Queen with a better kicker and that was that.
But it was still early so I decided to hit a $5 craps table. Bad idea, lost a little over $100. Which for the weekend put us down a little less than $100 which isn't bad considering how much fun we had. No crazy gambling stories, no threats to burn down the casino. Just a nice quiet weekend with my wife.

The Buss Stops Here

Lakers owner Jerry Buss died this week at age 80. Buss bought the team for $16M in 1980 (as part of a deal that included other properties) and now the Lakers are worth an estimated $1B. Once Jerry was asked if he would ever sell the team, he said "what could I buy that I would want more than the Lakers?"



He is certainly one of the most successful owners in the history of team sports, winning 10 titles and making the Finals 16 times (roughly every other year of his ownership). It's hard to calculate exactly how much credit he deserves for that, but he certainly was a great owner in that he hired good people and gave them the money and the autonomy to do their jobs. And the results are phenomenal.

The other world Jerry was involved in was poker. Most of the top pros will tell you Jerry was a good player and I'm sure that's true. But from what I saw of him he was clearly over-matched against the top pros and probably added millions of dollars to the poker economy by playing against tougher opponents.

One memorable televised poker moment involving Jerry Buss came during the NBC Heads Up Tournament. Buss was playing Daniel Negreanu (who was wearing a Ben Wallace jersey, just to needle Jerry after the Pistons beat the Lakers in the Finals) and not only did Jerry take a bad beat, it happened in a sick fashion.

Note: Even if you don't know poker, what happens hear is very clear and easy to understand.

What Do You Give Me For? Hollie Cavanagh & Amanda Leatherman

What do you give me for American Idol's Hollie Cavanagh and poker hostess hottie Amanda Leatherman?

Jesus, The Professor and the Ponzi Scheme

The Department of Justice amended its complaint against Full Tilt Poker, alleging the online site was a giant Ponzi Scheme.
When the site was shut down for U.S. players in April for illegally processing player deposits, many players expected to be fully repaid for the account balances which they could no longer use.
PokerStars repaid players in an expeditious fashion. Full Tilt did not, because it could not. According to the DOJ, player accounts totaled $440 million, but Full Tilt only had $60 million on hand.
And here's where the Ponzi Scheme accusation comes in: the site's owners and directors, including famous poker pros Chris "Jesus" Ferguson and Howard "The Professor" Lederer are alleged to have been paid millions over this time, $40m to Lederer and $25m to Ferguson (though he was promised much more because he owned nearly 20% of the company).
Full Tilt says it was not a Ponzi Scheme it just got in trouble because it got scammed by a payment processor and in other cases it elected to fund player accounts before the payments actually cleared. And when those payments didn't materialize, a huge hole grew. And when Full Tilt got shut down in the U.S. it had no way to fill that hole.
Obviously, no matter what happened, Full Tilt had an obligation to keep most if not all of player money in a liquid account (they can invest it and earn interest). But there are a couple extenuating circumstances here. We don't know for sure if Full Tilt intended to be a Ponzi Scheme or it just became one when they ran into trouble collecting funds.
But most importantly, internet poker should not be illegal. I lost less than $5 in this incident. I also lost my chance to play poker from my home, a hobby I greatly enjoy. But what I have been robbed of most of all is televised poker.
The World Series of Poker will likely survive because it can get other sponsors, but it may end up being the only poker show on TV. Because they cannot survive without the sponsorships from the poker sites.
But I've probably watched my last episode of Poker After Dark and The Big Game (although this still airs online), which is the best poker show for advanced players.
And that's what has me so angry. I can't even watch what I want on TV because of the government. And though many in the poker community are hopeful this will get repealed and internet poker will be legal and regulated, I don't think that will ever happen.
And it's a damn shame.

3000 Words

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Bryan Devonshire stacks his chips at the World Series of Poker



Justin Bieber wears a Kelly Kapowski t-shirt