The format that seemed to work so well in describing the action at the 2010 WSOP November Nine is going to get the full treatment now (and because I think the daggers that Dan has been sending me with his eyes have finally worked and I need to write something.)

A word about the “scoring system”: This year I want to keep track of how well (or poorly) a player is doing in a given year. +1 point for being a winner, -1 for being a loser, -3 if you have the misfortunate of winning my Screw You award, +3 for being my Player of the Month, and nothing for getting a coinflip. That’s what happens when you have a 50/50 chance. In the long run you just break even.

Winners

• Daniel Negreanu (1): My feelings about the All-time Money List aside, Daniel has hit the ground running in 2011 with his second place finish in the $100k Super High Roller 6-table SnG at the PCA. Pocketing a cool million a few days into the year has got to make you feel good.
• Erik Seidel (1): Sure, it’s aided by a $2.5 million score in an obscene $250,000 buy-in event, but Seidel won even more money than Daniel, $3.4 million for the month of January.
• Hendon Mob (1): For acknowledging the All-Time Money List is kind of turning into a farce and doing something about it by having options to remove Super High Roller SnGs and restricted tournaments.

Losers

• Viktor Blom (-1): If this guy actually owes $149 MILLION dollars to Swedish tax authorities, it will be safe to say that signing with Pokerstars was the worst thing to happen in his life. Going 2-1 in his Superstar Showdowns isn’t gonna be enough to cover that bill.
• Prahlad Friedman (-1): A man has got to pay the bills, I’m not going to get into a “is he a sellout?” conversation. That said, the fact that the forums and media are ablaze about his decision to join UB is probably not a good sign for him. His “brand” is likely to have taken a hit and his words about not joining the man have certainly come back to haunt him.
• The All-Time Money List (-1): Pretty much everyone has been dumping on this lately with the increase in buy-ins reaching astronomically stupid levels. Hendon Mob addressed this and that’s why they are one of the winners, but the list itself still seems like a wasted statistic.

Coinflips

• Annie Duke/Jeffery Pollack: I like the idea of a new Professional Poker League, but I am soooooo skeptical as to whether they can even pull it off. Also, not letting online play count in your formula looks to me more like laziness than anything else, and removes any player that is in the current generation of contenders.
• Phil Hellmuth: For someone that’s got to be the biggest free agent in poker by a country mile, his lack of a sponsorship had better be a calculated decision. Or its just that Phil isn’t as marketable as people thought? OK…that’s a stretch.
• Results from the Bluff Reader’s Choice Awards: Congratulations are in order for The Poker Beat winning its second consecutive RCA, this time in the “Best Web Based Poker Show” category. Still, would be nice to have Pokerati win Best Poker Blog and Cardrunners win Best Poker Resource. Ah well, there is always next year.

The “Eff You, Sir/Madam” Award

Every month there is bound to be at least one player/entity/whatever that deserves special mention for being an idiot for a particular month. It doesn’t have to be rational, its likely to get some flak, and is going to definitely almost always be a mindless rant. So without further adieu, the winner (loser?) is:

• Russ Hamilton (-3…not including negative karma): This month, I’m going for the low hanging fruit and giving this to Russ Hamilton. In fact, I’m tempted to name the award after him. He made the news earlier this month for flying off the handle at a Florida poker room as he was getting jeered about how bad he was when he couldn’t see the hole cards. He then proceeded to call his opponents “fucking dicks” and that “You do not know what you are talking about; you were not there. You just read about it and think you know.” No, Russ, they do know what they are talking about, because everyone from UB to the poker media to 60 FUCKING MINUTES said that you did it. And you did. So the fact that you grace us with your presence at a poker table anywhere on this Earth should come with the caveat that you are going to get verbally abused. And you should just take it or quit. No one remembers you for your WSOP win, they remember you for being the “fucking dick” who screwed people out of $20 million, and just maybe also for receiving the inaugural Pokerati “Fuck You” award. Maybe.

Player of the Month
The Player of the Month is taken straight from the winners list, and is given a coveted 3 points instead of 1 toward becoming the 2011 Pokerati Winners, Losers, Coinflips player of the year. I suppose. We haven’t really worked out all the details yet.

• Erik Seidel (3): Anyone that manages to wade through shark infested high roller waters not once but three times and cashes every single time more than deserves to be named Player of the Month. It was a nice progression too, from going 4th in the PCA SHR to 3rd in the Aussie Millions SHR to winning the “Full Tilt proving they can have a bigger buy-in than Stars” event. Very well deserved, and we’ll see if Erik can keep up the momentum in the coming months. If he is not ranking in ESPN’s “The Nuts segment I’d be pretty shocked. (EDIT: He has, just barely. Erik is ranked 10th this month.)

I have a friend in the poker industry. He’s a fantastic player, very smart, and a successful entrepreneur. On top of it, he’s a great guy. He has started up, managed, and hosted several top-rated poker television shows. He’s no slouch; he knows his stuff.

A few months ago, he called me up and wanted to talk about moving his (then-current) show to a new venue, broadcast medium, and sponsor. Specifically, he wanted to know if he could take the name of his show with him to his new broadcast home. For purposes of the discussion, let’s call the show “Big Slick.” Was Big Slick his property?

Truthfully, but unhelpfully, I told him: “It depends.” To try to start to figure it out, I asked him a number of questions about Big Slick. (I was a fan of the show, but didn’t know how the name came about. I also hadn’t been his attorney when he started it, so I didn’t know how the show itself began and developed.)

Not all of the questions and the follow-ups are here, but below are a few of the initial and critical ones if you have intellectual property that you want to protect and carry with you through your poker career. Poker players and personalities know the value of branding, personalities, and trade names. Often, they just need to make better up-front efforts to safeguard that value.

1. What does the agreement say?

What did the written agreement between my guy and his promoter/broadcaster say? It turns out it didn’t say anything; there was no written agreement. Not having a written agreement doesn’t necessarily mean there’s no contract between the parties. Some important contracts can be verbal. But some laws specifically prohibit verbal contracts (for example, many jurisdictions prohibit verbal real estate contracts selling real estate has to be done by written agreement). More important, verbal contracts are invariably tougher to enforce than written contracts. Their terms often aren’t clear and, even when they are, there’s often a disagreement about whether the parties agreed to commit themselves to a contract, as such. A clearly drafted and properly executed written agreement solves both of these problems.

Anyway, back to my pal. When he and the promoter decided to collaborate, it was agreed that an advertising sponsor would pay a certain amount to broadcast the show (this wasn’t committed to writing, either). My friend hosted and produced the show. He came up with the name Big Slick and owned the corresponding web domain name. Some help was provided gratis by the promoter in putting together the Big Slick logo for the show. There was no term on the agreement between my friend and the promoter.

2. Who had trademark rights in Big Slick?

While I was on the phone with my friend, I did a quick search of the trademarks databases in the US Patent and Trademark Office and the Canadian Intellectual Property Office. Neither showed a registration for the Big Slick trademark. (Remember that Big Slick is a pseudonym; you’ll have to take my word that the real mark was and is not descriptive and otherwise fully registrable.) Which meant that neither my guy nor his promoter had a registered trademark in the name.

What about common law trademark rights? Common law trademark rights are rights obtained through use of a non-registered mark. To the extent that there is a paramount issue in trademarks, it’s this notion of use, and not just use in any manner, but use as a trademark. Both my buddy and the broadcaster had been promoting the name through marketing for the show. However, had they been using Big Slick as a trademark? The promoter had listed Big Slick on its website as a member of a family of shows that it broadcast and promoted. This wasn’t use as a trademark; this was arguably an indication that it had a licence from the trademark owner to call attention to the fact that it broadcast the show. My friend’s usage was much more consistent and compelling. He used Big Slick as a brand and a trademark. His website or service wasn’t just broadcasting Big Slick; his show was The Big Slick.

While my friend came up with the name, the logo was a collaboration. This highlights the difference between word marks and design marks. Word marks are trademarks that are bare words in any font, style, or size. “PartyPoker” is trademarked as a word mark around the world (confined to the wares and services set out in the particular mark) however it is written or it appears. Design marks are trademarked logos or words written in a specific font or style (or both); “PartyPoker” in the stylized lettering with which we’re all familiar is also trademarked as a design mark in several jurisdictions.

There was no registered design mark for Big Slick. My friend indicated that both he and his promoter had worked on it “together” and that both had used it in marketing the show. A key question here (for copyright purposes) was “who actually put pen to paper and designed the logo?” Often, there’s one person that did it, and here it was my guy. My buddy should have had the copyright and the better set of trademark rights because the logo had been used by him as a trademark.

3. Other Issues

As briefly mentioned above, copyright also came into our discussion, but this post is already getting long enough without drilling down into that. I asked my friend whether Big Slick had any value separate and apart from his involvement. That is, if he left and the promoter still had a show called Big Slick, what would it be worth, either as a show or as a bare name or design mark containing Big Slick? Setting aside the IP aspects of who owns what, there was a practical question of whether the parties were about to start fighting over something that might not be worth a fight.

At the end of the day, the promoter suggested that it had some rights in Big Slick and would need to have those rights bought out. I disagreed, based fundamentally on my guy’s use of the word and design marks as trademarks (see above). My friend - ever the serial entrepreneur - decided to create a whole new name and go forward with his new promoter. I told him that he still had considerable rights in Big Slick and that simply walking away wasn’t his only option, but I respected his decision. (A potential public fight about the name between the parties wasn’t without risk for either of them.)

The bottom line, of course, is that the parties are always well-advised to turn their minds to these questions when they’re establishing their relationship so that there’s little room for argument later on. My friend went with a new promoter on a new site, but this time we insisted on a written agreement. (A written contract doesn’t have to be anyone’s magnum opus or cost an arm and a leg. My friend’s agreement was three pages and my review took a few minutes.) In it, I specified that my friend was to retain all intellectual property rights in his new show, inclusive of the name and all trademarks. The promoter would have an unlimited and non-exclusive right to broadcast and host the show on its website. Both parties are happy with the arrangement.

My friend also owns the new associated Internet domain name and is considering a trademark application.

The moral of the story is: write it down in advance and think the issues through so that, when poker-related property that has been developed is valuable and people are parting ways, there’s less to fight about and fewer fees wasted on lawyers. As another like-minded lawyer friend of mine puts it: Tough contractual negotiations are always easier than tough settlement negotiations.

(Thanks to Michael Hilliard (my best friend, an eminent IP lawyer, and counsel to Microsoft) and to Jamie Bashtanyk (@TCTrademarks on Twitter and my go-to trademark agent), for correcting this blog post for me. However, any errors in this post are mine alone.)

Toronto-based Stu Hoegner writes a darn good disclaimer as a gaming attorney and legal advisor. You can follow him on Twitter @GamingCounsel.

Today, January 30th @5:30 ET Viktor “Isildur1″ Blom will take on Daniel “w00ki3z” Cates in the third installment of the SuperStar Showdown. Cates is better known by his Full Tilt Poker name of Jungleman12 where he came on, and dominated, the high stakes cash scene last year.

Follow @merchdawg on Twitter for updates throughout the 2,500 hand match.

While looking for the video featured last week for the 1968 poker-based western Five Card Stud, I discovered even more music wrapped around said game and gambler’s living … fun, semi-timeless lyrics both:

1970 – Five Card Stud by Lorne Greene (about collusion)
1989 – Five Card Stud by Ace Frehley (about drawing to a one-outer)

Sorry this is a bit late today, but a combination of the WPT Southern Poker Championship not finishing until 3:30am, a 6th or 7th trip to Waffle House, and a six hour drive today I just now found time to get things together. Hopefully this trip will not suffer the same fate as the last one when SNOmageddon hit the south.

Poker Pod Radio:

Jack McAdoo reviews the biggest winners and losers in the high stakes cash games for 2010 in this 30 minute podcast. He does not come across with tons of energy but if you are looking for a good podcast to listen to and get some info that may not be covered by the mainstream podcast then this might be one for you. He closes out this show with a discussion on state of gambling in Florida. You can listen to the show on the Poker Pod Radio site or download it directly from iTunes.

The Hardcore Poker Show:

The multiple entry tournaments on Full Tilt are a big part of the discussion this week by Rob and Chris. The multi entry tournaments are compared to rebuy tournaments and how this new addition can change a way you have to play against a player without the player on that table actually earning those chips. To close out the show Phil Helmuth comes on to discuss his future endeavors and how tweeting too much has caused issues during his new sponsorship hunt. Listen to the show weekly on Sirius Satellite Radio channel 98 every Wednesday from 8-9pm ET or you can download it via iTunes.

Wicked Chops:

What is better than a little talk on poker and some non-poker TV. The guys from Wicked Chops come this week and discuss their thoughts on the ESPN coverage from the PCA main event. They are joined by WPT Live Updates team member Jeff “slim” Holsey. The discussion turns into wether the new show “The Walking Dead” is the best first season of a show ever. Once the two sides hash out their arguments they turn their attention to the new season of American Idol. This podcast has it all and does not give you an overload of a certain topic. Listen to the show on the Wicked Chops site or download it on iTunes.

I was all set this morning to write a blog entry on the continuing dispute in Kennedy & Omotoy v. Full Tilt Poker et al. (The original post by Dan Michalski was back in 2009.) This litigation is fascinating; it has bounced from state court to federal court and back to state court in California, and an update would be fun. But something else caught my eye: a public statement from the Alderney Gambling Control Commission stating that Alderney has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Nevada Gaming Control Board. The statement is here.

As just about everyone familiar with Internet gambling is aware, Alderney is one of the handful of jurisdictions worldwide that actually licenses online interactive gaming, including poker. (Other such jurisdictions include Gibraltar, Malta, the Isle of Man, Antigua, and Kahnawake.) Probably the most prominent poker website operating under Alderney’s regulation is www.fulltiltpoker.com. Obviously Tilt is a US-facing site, which is interesting fact number 1. Interesting fact number 2 is that Alderney only regulates i-gaming. This makes sense. The place is a speck of an island off the north-western coast of France with a population of 2,400; it doesn’t have any bricks and mortar casinos.

The agreement between Nevada and Alderney ”paves the way for enhanced cooperation in the field of gaming regulation.” Not too helpfully, the public statement specifies that this co-operation will extend to “the areas of sharing of information, expertise, knowledge and skills as well as exchange visits and training.” I hope for the sake of the Alderney parties that the “exchange visits” are mostly one-way and in Vegas, especially at this time of year.

So the Internet gaming regulator of a US-facing poker site (that, along with all currently US-facing poker sites) has a memorandum of understanding prescribing areas of co-operation with Nevada. (Don’t parse that previous sentence too closely; Nevada may still have a problem with i-gaming operators that turned off US players back in 2006 when the UIGEA was passed and that aren’t currently US-facing.) And since Alderney only regulates Internet gaming, the co-operation must be at least partly with a view to Nevada understanding and learning more about Internet gaming. Apparently Nevada doesn’t have a problem with recognizing the authority of Alderney to regulate Internet gaming; it only has a problem with the behaviour (sanctioned by Alderney) of some of their licensees. These kinds of agreements between gaming regulators aren’t particularly new. The Kahnwake Gaming Commission has struck agreements with Alderney and with Antigua that would appear to go much further than this accord between Alderney-Nevada. But it’s still interesting that Nevada is reaching out to engage with current online regulators - even online regulators that accept US-facing licensees.

What this means for Internet poker in the US is anyone’s guess, but it seems clear that Nevada is heading for regulation at some point. Nevada regulators were going to be at the forefront of the licensing structure contemplated by the Reid Bill draft that was floating around last month. The Nevada Gaming Commission was going to be one of the leading Qualified Bodies under the bill on a number of measures. It’s safe to say that Nevada will have a leading role if poker regulation happens at the federal level in the next couple of years; federal action may actually be more likely if more and more states start regulating intrastate gaming, including poker. At an intrastate level, Nevada’s signals have been mixed at best. This kind of agreement with Alderney, however, may indicate that Nevada could be thinking about going its own way absent federal interactive gaming oversight.

Internet poker regulation in the US may be one (very small) step closer.

Don’t Check-Raise Me: A South Carolina law permitting more-good real-money friendly poker appears be on the horizon.

Small-but-big victory for poker players in South Carolina yesterday … with the state’s senate judiciary committee voting 15-6 to debate a bill on the floor that would emphatically legalize poker home games.

The need to revise SC gambling laws came to the fore when players busted in a raid on a private residence in 2006 decided to fight their tickets on the basis that poker was a game of skill, and therefore not in violation of the an 1802 law that may or may not have made playing Texas Hold’em — and Monopoly or Parcheesi for that matter — ticketable misdemeanors. The Poker Players Alliance, in one of their first non-UIGEA undertakings, provided legal assistance in that case, which is currently pending in South Carolina’s supreme court … lower courts having already acknowledged that poker is indeed more a game of skill than chance.

The PPA has since led grassroots efforts in SC to get the current bipartisan bill to the Senate floor, and seems to have engaged the Spartanburg Tea Party’s support. To be honest, I wasn’t sure at first if their “action alert” was a call to push for passage or the opposite. However, the relative ease with which the bill moved through committee suggests Tea Partiers are finally coming around to see that most poker legislation lines up with their stated beliefs.

In addition to permitting home games (owhile forbidding taking a rake from such endeavors), S. 254 provides card players grounds for suing someone welching on a bet, and explicitly spells out the illegality of video poker. Not sure if any of those lines could be (mis?)construed to penalize anyone playing online poker in South Carolina or even just printing out hand histories … not to mention using a poker genie in your neighborhood sit-n-go. But still arguably better than the 209-year-old gambling law it looks to replace.

Read the full bill here, and below for the specific section relevant to poker played in private residences for no rake:

More…

The official 2011 World Series of Poker schedule has just been released, and there are a few juicy tidbits to discuss. The opening event this year will be a $25,000 heads-up tournament with 256 maximum entries (fyi, if they get there, the prize pool would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $6 million). The $2,500 10-game event later in the WSOP will now include Badugi, and we’ll see the return of a half Omaha-8/half Stud-8 tournament for all those who missed it.

The biggest revelation may be the extended late registration times. Players will be able to late register for tournaments for up to four hours after the start of an event, and the big question at hand will have to be, “How will this affect playing in multiple events for bracelet bets?” Right?

More…

Sorry for the delay folks, but, to put it simply, the amount of alcohol I had to intake to overcome the New York Jets’ loss on Sunday was probably enough to give even AlCantHang a hangover. But back to business, as Katkin pointed out below, there’s quite a bit of poker going on in the world right now.

Robert Frost once wrote about two roads diverging in a wood, but poker players had a much tougher choice, as the paths from the PCA branched out all over the world. Los Angeles, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and even Australia are the hosts to this week’s tournament schedule.

Aussie Millions (Melbourne, Australia)

It’s become an annual tradition for all of the Full Tilt sponsored players (and a few other big names as well) to head down under following the PCA. There’s another $100,000 event, the $10K Aussie Millions, and, new to this year’s event, a $250,000 single table tournament, with a winner-take-all first prize of $2 million.

The Main Event is just getting underway, but there’s already been plenty of action at the Aussie Millions. Their $100K event drew 38 players, and likely would have drawn a bigger crowd had members of Team PokerStars participated, but they made it a point to boycott this event in retaliation after no FullTilt players participated in the PCA $100k. This isn’t really the space for this discussion, but between the $100K boycotting and the head-to-head late night poker shows, it will be interesting to see how far this issue may go.

Getting back to the event at hand, the final table of six featured David Benyamine and Erik Seidel, amongst others. When the dust had settled, Sam Trickett had captured the title and the $AUD 1.525 million first place prize, beating out Englishman (and Brighton & Hove Albion football club chairman) Tony Bloom heads-up. [PokerNews]

WSOP Circuit – Choctaw (Durant, Oklahoma)

One of the stops that was added to the initial WSOP Circuit schedule was this one, in Durant, Oklahoma. It’s about an hour outside of the greater-Dallas area, so it was going to be very interesting to see just how many players would make the trip up for their $1,600 Main Event, and they certainly did not disappoint. 808 players generated a prize pool of almost $1.2 million, with a first place prize of $232,706.

Among the 81 players who cashed in this event were a Main Event winner (Berry Johnston), a runner-up (TJ Cloutier), and perhaps in the most interesting story, one other former Main Event final tablist in Richard Lee. Lee, who is from San Antonio, Texas, largely dropped out of the public eye after his Main Event finish in 2006, but had a very public incident in which he was charged with running an illegal gambling ring back in 2007. He did not spend any time in jail but gave up $2.2 million in a plea deal.

With a spot in the National Championship Freeroll on the line for just the winner in this event, there was even more value to be had for the winner. That lucky man was Huy (pronounced Wee) Nguyen, who defeated Traci Brown heads-up for the ring and the freeroll entry (and the cash, of course). In an interesting twist, the heads-up match was a real live Red River shootout, as Brown (who finished 12th in this year’s WSOP Ladies’ event) is from Austin, Texas while Nguyen hails from Norman, Oklahoma. No word on whether the crowd had more red or burnt orange. [WSOP]

LA Poker Classic (Commerce, California)

Likely the longest continuous poker series outside of the World Series of Poker, the month-and-a-half spectacle that is the LAPC is one of the most popular stops of the year. Because of its proximity to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, two of the most poker player populated places in the world, they draw quite a crowd for most of their events. As someone who has spent some time playing these events, you’ll inevitably find yourself at a table with JC Tran or Thor Hansen if you’re there long enough.

The initial event this year, the brainchild of Matt Savage, was a $300 tournament with $1 million guaranteed in the prize pool and $250,000 guaranteed to the winner. This was accomplished in large part to the 4 starting days and the opportunity to re-enter each day if you did not survive through the previous one.

California native Cory Nistler was the last man standing, taking home the quarter of a million dollar first prize as well as one of the craziest looking trophies you’ll ever see. [LAPC]

Elsewhere…

Action is underway at the WPT’s latest stop, the Southern Poker Championship in Biloxi, Mississippi, while the Borgata in Atlantic City is hosting the Winter Poker Open… After the performance of the brothers’ Mizrachi in this past year’s WSOP Main Event, we knew poker talent had to run in the family. Now we know which side, as Susan “MommaGrinder” Mizrachi Laufer took down over $4,000 for winning a tournament on Full Tilt Poker this past week.

Episode 34
Rabbit Hunt is back and its an all-news podcast this week. Spartanfox and Tyresias discuss Russ Hamilton’s blowup in Florida, the $100k Challenge at the Aussie Million, Annie Duke and Jeffrey Pollack’s new poker tour, and more!

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Jon Katkin

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OP-ED

We’re a month into 2011 and already, the poker season has revved itself into high gear. Since January 1, we’ve seen major multi-tournament events in the Bahamas, Melbourne, and now LA. If that’s not enough poker for you, then head to Vegas where you can play in a couple of smaller, but still notable, tournament series; the Caesars Winter Classic (running now) and Venetian’s venerable Deep Stack series, starting on the 28th.

And while I’m as big a fan of a good tournament – or tournament series – as the next guy, I have to ask has poker gone too far?

For a moment, let’s forget about all the money it would cost an average player to follow the circuit around the world and just look at sheer number of events that a tourney player has to choose from. I mean, if you want to become a professional hobo, there are probably worse ways to see the world than by joining the poker circus. Los Angeles, Vegas, Atlantic City, Biloxi, Paradise Island, Prague, Sao Paulo, Melbourne, London…. The world’s your oyster if you can pay the freight and handle the jet lag and inevitable food poisoning you’ll pick up somewhere along the way.

There’s too much poker to be played in too many places. All of these tournament options are slowly cannibalizing each other by stretching the player base – and the players’ bankrolls – too thin.

The fact is, there’s barely a week left on the calendar where there’s not some kind of tournament begging to be played. Even if you just confine yourself to the continental US, you can easily go months without ever sleeping in your own bed or seeing the family you used to have. Decide to play internationally and you could easily find yourself classified as a missing person unless you can regularly Skype with your loved ones to prove that you’re still alive.

More…

JimmyLegs and Rosenkrantz deliver again with the new episode of The Micros. The three main characters (don’t remember their names yet — the one dude, the other guy, and lego chick …) are enjoying the fruits of one dude’s binking a Sunday Mill. But with a bigger online bankroll come new levels of trouble …

A little reminder that The Maven Training boot camp gets underway next weekend … and Pokerati readers get a discounted price. By all means it’s an investment of time and money … that’s why they call it boot camp! No push ups, but otherwise rather intense. If you don’t see the proven ROI in being a Maven graduate, well then you’re probably not ready to step up your game.

Real life training for poker live and online, with a community of continued support and education. Click here for the Pokerati discount, and otherwise just be sure to tell ‘em we sent you.

Item uno: I’m doing some back-end (*giggle*) work to make our beloved Pokerati run better. If you see any errors or have any complaints, leave a comment here.

Item two-o: I just deleted a massive number of registered so-called users who all used what look like spam ids and .ru mail domains. If you’re a real live Russki, who enjoys and contributes to Pokerati, then I highly recommend that you get a real email address on a legitimate server, and register with a name that is recognizable as a nickname and not just a string of random English alphabet characters. Then, leave me a comment here, and I’ll send you a code word that will verify you’re a real human, and I won’t delete your ID again. Because I’m going to be on the lookout for a while and nuking the random jackwagon userids. Please don’t take offense at being called a Russki — I love your smoking hot women, and the AK-47. Oh, and vodka. That DirecTV commercial with the mini-giraffe? That’s how I think all Russkis live…

Item The Last: upgrades will be coming soon, though it shouldn’t affect any of you lovely people.

Watched Five Card Stud this afternoon (on Showtime Extreme) … a 1968 western starring Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum about a drunken poker game that turns into a lynching when the new guy turns out to be a cheat. But when the lynch mob starts dying off one-by-one, no one knows who’s seeking vengeance, nor which player will be the last man standing.

It takes place in Colorado in 1880 … the gold rush is on and the town of Rincon is fast becoming known for its juicy games and associated vice. And as much as I was intrigued by the role of black people and Christianity post-Civil War (as portrayed in the late ’60s) … what really stood out was how the players shuffled their chips.

Anyhow, the music is kinda country meets the Doors, with gambler’s lyrics sung by an old-school Vegas crooner. And with last month’s news that production of Rounders 2 is underway … well, Five Card Stud, a song about the game that was the great Uncle to contemporary Texas Hold’em, reminded me how much poker stories have changed over the years, and how much they haven’t.