Remember that song Jen told us about way back when?

Just mere moments after it just aired, GSN puts up this week’s episode on Youtube right away for you to enjoy. Barry Greenstein drops a new phrase on the GSN viewers early in the show.

photo: Alex Garcia/Chicago Tribune

The Empress Casino in Joliet, IL, and its poker room of course, had to be evacuated yesterday as a big fire threatened to turn the first casino I ever gambled in to ashes.

At age 19, a couple of my Northwestern classmates and I would skip a few classes sessions of Super Mario and make the trek to Chicago’s outer suburbs … (I can’t remember if you only had to be 18 to gamble or if we used fake IDs) … and we all know where things have gone from there. When the Empress opened in 1992, you used to have to pay $12 to go on a “cruise” … i.e. the boats would leave the dock for about 10 feet. We were so excited to learn, after a few trips, that we could be playing enough $5 blackjack to get the pit boss to “comp” us another cruise ticket, and eventually we didn’t even have to stop playing or get off the boat! Ahh, our first taste of the high-roller life.

This is also where I was introduced to the concept of “a chip and a chair” when I once took my last $10 and put it on the 5-to-1 on the Wheel of Fortune and eventually left the casino that day up about $200, which was an absolute mint back then. It is also where I was exposed to (but didn’t quite get) the concept of bankroll management when my girlfriend at the time kept coming over to a blackjack table where I was winning and grabbing $30 or $40 every so often. I was pretty pissed at her by the time I ultimately went bust, thinking she blew my wad on slots little by little … but much to my pleasant surprise she was just pocketing the money, and when I later moaned to her about the bad beat I took with an 11 against the dealer’s 6, she was totally nonplussed and pulled out $265 that she had stashed away, telling me, here, this is yours … to which I responded “I love you”.

For those who missed it live yesterday … this week’s episode employs a slimmed down cast with just me and Gary Wise, which is kinda like the difference between The Beatles and Wings, but still … with BJ, Parvis, and Ringo off on other ventures, Gary, Huff, and I break down in nitty-gritty detail whether or not Vivek Rajkumar is just a flash in the pan, the $10k field sizes of Bay 101 vs. the Wynn Classic, Dream Team Poker, and Greg Raymer’s ambassadorial efforts on behalf of the PPA. But really, I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but you can skip all that and just listen to the last few minutes for Joe Stapleton’s “Tight Laydown” … I’m starting to believe more and more that the whole “show” we poker journos do really is just an elaborate set-up for the real show, which starts somewhere around the 58th minute.

(Plus “the Insider”, too!)

on PokerRoad

The Poker Beat
Huff, Michalski, Wise, Stapleton
3/19/09

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Online gambling news from Party Gaming and the state of Texas. Plus, we follow up on our look at the European Union’s ever-changing stance on our industry. What does all this mean? Is it good news or bad?

Speaking of bikinis … there’s another poker-skin photo shoot fixin’ to go down in Vegas … reportedly Tiffany Michelle, Erica Schoenberg, and Evelyn Ng will be waxing up for a big poker-themed spread slated for a summer issue of KnockOut magazine, which is basically like Maxim Wicked Chops, only with more chicks and less poker.

Kinda unique here is the coming together of three poker patches — Ultimate Bet, Full Tilt, and Bodog — all in the same shoot.

And though I don’t know this for sure, my guess is that it’s all somehow connected to the forthcoming Knockout Poker Tour. Their inaugural event runs June 5-8 (during the WSOP) at the Hard Rock. This is not a four-day tourney, mind you, it’s a four-day “experience” … where the tournament is a $5,000 + 4,000 or 5,000, your choice depending on what level of VIP perks you want … private jets, limos, penthouse suites, VIP club seating, three parties, Rehab cabanas, etc. … and apparently surrounded the whole time by KnockOut hotties, who will happily let you take pictures with your hand on their butts. Oh, and the champion gets a bracelet, too.

Should be an interesting event, to say the least. And should you decide to forgo the $5k NLH WSOP tournament going on the same day (which pays out about 91 94 percent) in favor of the KOP event (paying out just 50 percent, but guaranteeing a higher booze-and-tail return) and actually win:

Private security will be on-call to fend off any over-zealous club girls who want a piece of the Knockout Poker Tournament Champ. Remember players, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. That includes the bevy of girls throwing themselves at your feet and the collection of email addresses and phone numbers you accumulated over the weekend.

photo: Stephanie Moore/NBC Sports

Fresh off her Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover advertorial, followed by her GoDaddy spokesmodel deal (and Danica Patrick commercial), followed by her impressive run to a $250k televised cash at the NHUPC final-final table … Vanessa Rousso is back at her old stomping grounds, doing a monthlong, seven-stop, three-casino run through Florida — with lectures, seminars, charity tourneys, and a “series of instructional workshops grounded in ‘Game Theory’ and Sun Tzu’s teachings about The Art of War”.

Ahh, now I see, her master plan kicked into gear with the PokerStars bikini shoot is all starting to make sense … she’s now got documented cred in looks, personality, skill … if only she could share her grasp of high-level contemporary mathematics and ancient eastern military philosophy with the troubled kids in her old hood!

(Isn’t 26 such a fun age?)

Click below for Vanessa’s Florida pokery homecoming itinerary:

More…

GSN dawdled quite a bit this week in putting up episode 3 of High Stakes Poker on Youtube, but better late than never I say.

Talking about actual magic here, not the Magic the Gathering… The Colorado kid found himself “addicted” to poker and subsequently became intrigued by magic tricks. He even invented a new one. And the story about finding an alternative to the “unhealthy” habit of poker evidently warranted a piece on a local television station. Guess real news about people losing their jobs and homes is in short order…

This is simply because the odds a player faces in limit hold’em are nearly always very good – and as a result folding too much is a much bigger mistake than calling too much (if you are getting ten to one odds you do not have to be right very often to show a profit making thin calls); this is the exact opposite of big bet poker, where calling too much will quickly bust you (you have to be much more confident about your hands strength when getting two to one or worse odds – as you have to be right a much higher percentage of the time).

“Always remember that limit is a game about extracting as much value from your hand as possible, and saving as many bets as you can when it looks like you are behind.”

As a result of this, many players brought up on big bet poker find limit an extraordinarily boring game when they first start learning the mechanics of it – the scope for advanced play making (and therefore a lot of the creative thought) is just much less in limit simply because it is so much harder to bluff. With most players now being brought up on big bet poker, many of the limit games (particularly the now popular mixed games) have become rather juicy in recent times, full of big bet players who try and bluff far too much.

More…

This just in over the transom … from our wifi providers at the Venetian … and sure enough, this scheduled skill-based series will be competing directly with the WSOP:

We are pleased to announce The Venetian Poker Room’s Deep Stack Extravaganza III schedule is now available. I have attached it to this email for your convenience however for future reference it can be found online at http://venetian.com/Pages.aspx?id=2451. In addition to the DSE III schedule, you’ll also notice that our April DSE II schedule is available as well as the winners from our DSE I tournament held in February 2009. A couple things of note for our DSE III:

Dates of Tournament: June1 to July 15
Starting Chip Counts:

• $225 NLH Shootout: 1,500, no additional chips available
• $330 NLH and $550 PLO: 10,000, 2,000 additional with optional $10 staff bonus
• $550 NLH and $1,070 NLH: 12,500, 2,500 additional with optional $10 staff bonus
• $550 Omaha 8/B and  $550 H.O.R.S.E: 8,000, 2,000 additional with optional $10 staff bonus
• $1,590 and $2,000 NLH: 15,000, 5,000 additional with optional $10 staff bonus
• $5,000  NLH Main Event: 20,000, 5,000 additional with optional $10 staff bonus
• Super Satellite: $4,000, no additional chips available

Table Count: The Venetian Poker Room will be expanding to 89 tables to accommodate our rapidly growing player base
Registration: Begins at 9 p.m. the day prior to of each event
Event Start Times: No-Limit Tournaments begin at 12 p.m. The Omaha 8/B, H.O.R.S.E. and the PLO Tournaments start at 4PM. See poker room tournament staff for super satellite start times.
Best Overall Points Winners: 1/2 of one percent will be withheld from all Deep Stack III tournament prize pools for Best Overall Points Winners. 10 players will be awarded Best Overall Player prizes. All awards will be paid in casino chips.

I’m not sure what to make of this video … I think I like it, but I also like documentaries about insects and the Steve Wilkos Show … and if Tao of Pokerati can talk to hookers with the likes of Benjo and Professional Keno Player Neil Fontenot, then why can’t Tiffany Michelle and Maria Ho walk the streets of San Jose in pursuit of hockey tickets, which they acquire with assistance from Layne Flack and Rick Fuller? Would dismiss it as just a personal non-pokery vid (and not worth posting) but they did add music to the background:

Perry Friedman, getting ready for the main event.

This week Annie Duke and friends are trying to sell wedding dresses. Not sure who it was that bought one from her, but all it took was a simple phone call to get someone to pony up a “main event”. And with that, the non-poker world was introduced to some poker jargon and an example of how it can apply in their everyday lives:

“main event” = $10,000

Who knew!?! I mean we did, but now we can expect Joe the Non-poker-playing Plumbers everywhere to be saying things like, “I got in a little fender bender and my lawyer got me a main event’s worth of repairs!” or “Did you see that guy on Price is Right, Darryl? He spun that wheel and landed on a dollar to win a main event!”

Awesome … go poker! Will be curious, though, to see if Annie Duke will be backing half the field in this year’s WSOP main event.

UPDATE: It was Perry Friedman (and his bride-to-be) who made a main event charitable donation in exchange for a bridal gown.

MORE UPDATE: I am now much more likely to read Annie’s blog on Mondays than I was before.

Five arrested at a home game … and here, a news report showing local officials trying to explain the concept of rake and why it’s bad:

(via Poker Players Alliance)

Online gambling gets some good news in America, as the new US Trade Representative promises to follow the WTO rules! This as the European Union puts the online gambling in the back seat. Plus, what the hell is wrong with the government of South Carolina?