Amazing. Didn’t think it could be done. Yet the entities at Wicked Chops keep getting better and better at this whole video talk format, and if you look/listen closely you might start to believe that they’re actually not unintelligent, uninformed, uncouth sexist, racist wankers. Clearly WCP’s marketing department must be going ape-shit over this travesty and calling for someone’s firing if “the entities” are gonna go on-air every week and disgrace the Wicked Chops brand.

For those of you who didn’t see it — or get to watch in full — here’s an hour and 40minutes of the masters of poker low-brow taking on the headier issues of the poker day … with their special guests this week Annie Duke, John Pappas, and me … joining the crew for my first ever video Skype at 53:00 if you’re short on time and have to get right to the good stuff.

Also fans of @JessWelman will wanna be sure to check out the early part of the show, where she makes her debut appearance delivering news briefs and tackling matters of poker pop culture such as Beth Shak’s forthcoming season on Miliionaire Matchmaker.

* Seriously, not sure what I kept looking at way up in the sky. Video-chat clearly adds 10 pounds.

Getting caught up and back in the swing of things — slowly but surely — so what better way than to listen to the most recent episode of The Poker Beat?

The Poker Beat: July 22, 2010

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Rookie twitterer @GaryWise1 took his turn in Capt. Huff’s chair as @BJNemeth and @JessWelman panel-bantered about:

• The pre-markup hearing in DC with Annie Duke
• Make-up of the 2010 November Nine
• The value, if any, of poker agents — and how the WSOP accommodates them during the main event
• BJ’s philosophical non-dilemma over coverage of Matt Affleck’s emotional bustout *
• The difference between poker media and poker journalism
• The Year of Mizrachi and the accidental WTF? of the current WSOP Player of the Year scoring system
• Annette Obrestad’s B- performance
• The 3-headed Monster of Team WSOP without @JeffreyPollack
• WSOP numbers and final table times

* great explanation, BJ. But question … Is there any discernable line where the “field of play” in poker begins, and ends?

Other episode-relevant links:

The Redemption of Matt Affleck by Gary Wise
The Long, Lonely Walk of Matt Affleck by Howard Swains (with photos by Joe Giron)

Next ep coming tomorrow. Play along in the PokerRoad forums.

A security guard asked us if this was the longest final table bubble ever. “That’s a good question,” said Pauly. It’s by far been the longest we can remember. And while it’s possible such a 10-down-to-9 occurred back in the old days … I highly doubt it. It’s a testament to the value of making the November Nine, if anything, and ironic how it brings us back to the old-old days when poker tourneys were routinely settled over marathon sessions.

Episode 76: On and On and On and On with Benjo — Some four hours into the Final Table of 10, people are getting antsy about getting to the November Nine. Alcohol is wearing off and drugs are kicking in … causing some people to sleep on chairs and others to run randomly across the Amazon. (Everyone’s got the munchies, but the cupboard is bare!) Tony the security guard gets nervous about his staff having to go home at 7am, and the players … it’s call-bet-fold, maybe bet-raise-fold.

I don’t know what they said, but I heard the entities from Wicked Chops talking with @JessWelman about something involving the Isle of Man. I was very curious, particularly because I eventually plan to reveal the answer to that trivia question that no one — not even Mathers — answered correctly. (The answer was Isle of Man.)

The end of the Series is a time when poker media types often throw out much of the good stuff they’ve heard but haven’t yet shared, or exchange different bits of info to figure out what all adds up and what doesn’t. So I headed their way …

As a longtime, multi-show podcaster, there’s little I dislike more than when someone encroaches on an episode in progress … whether that be a solicitor at the door (when on skype) or an ignorant walker-upper during mobile recordings. That’s what I did here. Oops. My bad, but hey, Jess is plenty familiar with the concept of me botching up a show, so …

Their conversation seemed intelligent and intense for several minutes. That’s all I know. Thus, I plan to skip over the part with Jeff Madsen (sorry dude) to get right to the Jess part to hear what sort of industry dirt, informed or otherwise, they were batting around.

http://wickedchopspoker.com/wicked-chops-podcast-ep-11-with-jeff-madsen-jessica-welman/

Episode 69: Cutting Loose with Change100 – Dan and Pauly give Change100 a little guff for working “Michalski hours” after showing up at 9pm. Her WSOP assignment is official over, but she’s at the Rio to check out the last bits of Day 7 as a self-admitted scenster. A potential elimination hand occurs during the beginning of the episode and Pauly ditches the crew to cover the action inside the ropes. Meanwhile, Dan and Change100 have a leisurely chat about how much more enjoyable the WSOP is when you don’t have to be running around like a madman covering hands.

Episode 70: Emerging Narratives and November Nine No-Names with Benjo – The power trio returns for a rare episode featuring Dan, Benjo, and Pauly. While sweating the final four tables, Benjo quickly recaps some of the more interesting narratives from the Main Event. The discussions shifts towards whether or not we care if the final nine players are a bunch of unknowns.

Episode 71: Vampire Weekend with Benjo – During the last break of Day 7, the agents were slithering around the Amazon Ballroom and the hallways sucking the blood out of anyone in still alive in the Main Event without an endorsement deal. Benjo and Pauly discuss the sleazy side of poker and their plans to take over the live updates and become the biggest player management agency at the 2011 WSOP with BrokeDickPoker.com

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Complete Tao of Pokerati archives
Change100
Benjo (translated)

The Poker Beat’s Huff-honcho was away crafting his life and future … so I somehow, as a third- or fourth-stringer, commandeered the hosting chair. Think I can now lay claim to being the Glen Carano of poker podcasting!

With @JessWelman, @BJNemeth, and new-to-twitter @GaryWise1 providing analysis and reality checks, we got into Israel’s sudden crackdown on online gambling, the WSOP-Circuit revamp, and of course, the latter stages of the 2010 WSOP Main Event … along with the WPT Season 9 overhaul, which happened to be getting underway across the highway at Bellagio, in rather star-powered fashion.

July 15, 2010

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Episode 67: Tempers Rising with Benjo DiMeo – An incensed Benjo goes off on an ESPN cameraman who tried to pick a fight with one of his French colleagues. As a six-year vet, Pauly shares a few of his run ins with the same surly cameraman who once nailed Mad Harper in the head. Yes, tempers are rising on Day 5 of the Main Event as the action on the tables and in the aisles heat up.

Episode 68: Fun with Names: Fokkin Bonkers with Benjo – After realizing that Dutch pro Fokke Beukers has the best name left in the Main Event, Benjo and Pauly search the remaining players list and attempt to pronounce the truly obscure and difficult ones.

Holy fugk, didn’t realize how many episodes behind I left all you over on this side of the internet pond. If Pauly, Benjo and I are supposed to be running in tandem as in a three-legged race, clearly I am the burlap sack. (Essential, but scratchy!) Be sure to catch up with whatever isn’t in your iTunes via the Tao of Pokerati complete archives.

And below are additional excellent and important episodes from the 2010 main event:

Quick mini-archive

Episode 59: The Party of the Year with Benjo
Episode 60: Fumigation and Boners with Chip Bitch
Episode 61: Media Day and Angry Timtern
Episode 62: Media Daze
Episode 63: Day 4 Hypertension
Episode 64: Big Head Randy and the Min-Cashers

Episode 63: Day 4 Hypertension – With fewer than 1,000 players to go, Dan and Pauly wax on the tension inside the Amazon Ballroom along with the breakdown of the Pavilion. Pauly wonders if Team Pokerati’s last player standing, the Big Randy, in the Main Event is properly patched up as action approaches the money bubble.

Episode 64: Big Head Randy and the Min-Cashers – Dan and Pauly hang out at the Bad Beat bar and wonder if they are coolers? Or if the Big Randy had busted out because he was not wearing a Pokerati patch. Yes, the Big Randy busted before the money bubble. The discussion shifts to the bubble strategy for PokerStars qualifiers who also have a PCA package riding on the line along with the min-cash.

Episode 65: Boo Bubble – Dan was napping in his car as the bubble slowly approached. He woke up during the dinner break and wondered where everyone went. Pauly clued him in and Dan was bummed that he couldn’t record the players groaning in dissent. The Bubble is nigh.

Episode 66: Bubblicious – Pauly and Dan were hanging out in upper level of the Jack Links’ beef jerky lounge keep tabs on the entire Amazon Ballroom from the high ground when the bubble burst. They captured the announcement of Tim McDonald’s 748th place elimination thereby becoming this year’s Bubble Boy (and winning a consolation seat in the 2011 WSOP). They also recorded the jubilant celebration from the players who made the money in the 2010 Main Event.

Episode 56: Beast Light Reunion – Pauly quizzes Dan about reconnecting with his ole teammates from Milwaukee’s Best Light (one of whom has also joined Team Pokerati) and wonders whatever happened to the inflatable beer cans that seemed ubiquitous at the WSOP just a few years ago.

Episode 57: Scents and Subtle Sounds of the Main Event with Snoopy – An impromptu episode (with our British colleague Snoopy) to further discuss odor emissions — stemming from loose bathing habits, flatulence, pungent reefer, and a growing desire for luck — as the main event progresses.

Episode 53: Porn Stars, Hookers, and Poker Players with Benjo – While sitting in the press box, Pauly and Benjo notice that their favorite massage girl is working today. The discussion veers off into running a hooker ring out of Europe to coincide with various poker tours.

Episode 54: Day 1D Pharmaceutical Report – Here’s Pauly’s solo report where he give a quick rundown of street prices for pharmies and other illicit narcotics.

Episode 55: 7,319 with Benjo - The official numbers for the Main Event were released: 7,319 runners. Benjo and Pauly discuss the origins of the increase in the player pool.

Is somebody winning the TOC? Do we care? Not saying I won’t be watching it once it gets edited down for TV, but I thought we were supposed to be at a final table by now, not down to 17 10. With more than a week of retrospective and a third of the field eliminated remaining, the preferable alternatives for the 2011 WSOP seem obvious:

a) Hold the TOC at the very beginning of the WSOP, under some premise like who’s gonna kick off the Series with a little extra freeroll juice?

b) Hold the TOC during the November Nine. Add a little Harrah’s-branded excitement to that week, ya know, and give top pros a reason to make sure they’re part of it all? Also would give some eligible winners a chance to qualify while their stock is hot …

With this and three other final tables going on today … WTF happened to that “day off” we were promised?

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Episode 44: TOC Rubbernecking

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Dan showed up to the Rio super early for a Sunday just in case the the DOJ decided to bust Full Tilt honchos Howard Lederer and Jesus Ferguson. Pauly compared his morbid fascination of the potential perp walk to watching a NASCAR race in order to see a big wreck.

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Episode 45: Bad Beat Bar WTF!

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Dan and Pauly recap the brief events of Day 1 of the TOC, and the slight confusion surrounding the change in schedule.

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Be sure to catch up with all the episodes you’ve missed in the TOP podcast archives.

More episodes coming your way … because really, is there a better way to enjoy the full WSOP experience without being in Las Vegas? (Well I mean other than following Mathers here, on 2+2, Poker Road, and twitter …)

Of course you’ve known for years that I’m nowhere near so prolific as Pauly. That’s why he has a book coming out — I think like today! — and I’ve got just overlapping outlines, partial sample chapters … and now the occasional TOP episode previously unpublished here, but of course always available in the complete Tao of Pokerati archives for the chronologically demanding.

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Episode 42: Donkament Bomber

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Dan and Pauly keep a bird eye’s view on DonkeyBomber’s run during Day 2 of a donkament from the press box and find the easiest way to spot him is by his pants. They also chat about another Pokerati player — Toothless Bob — who was running great but suddenly went AWOL, as various types are known to do as we all get deep into the WSOP.

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Episode 43: Bad Beat Bar WTF!

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What do Benjo and 7 Mexicans have in common with a flaring mob of Americans and Africans demanding someone at Harrah’s change the channel? Bad beat, obv. We’ve all heard stories, but Dan takes Pauly to the Bad Beat Bar itself, a comfortable but sparsely populated spot in a Rio Convention Center spillover area that feels more like a university commons than sports bar.

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WSOP 2010 Insta-flashback …

The World Series had just gotten underway and Pauly, Dan, and Benjo preview the upcoming World Cup …

Episode 20: Benjo’s Bets and Conspiracy Theories

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Benjo explains his bets and talks about rigged-game conspiracy theories that our favorite Bulgarian bartender shared with him. Pauly and Dan pontificate on the gross discrepancies in World Cup lines between Harrah’s properties and off-Strip sports books.

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Every year at the WSOP, there are those “working it” who win, and those who lose … and plenty of us who have done both before and now do the bare minimum just to maintain and somehow stay in the game. Whether it’s being media, flooring, dealing, executiving, whatever … it’s not too different from what the full-time players have going on in their own poker pursuits.

One of the clear winners this year has been Tim Fiorvanti, aka @Tim00, aka “Timtern”. This WSOP youngster returned for his second Series to be a pathetically paid PokerRoad intern … and shortly into it got an additional gig as a pathetically paid Bluff Magazine writer. Nice!

Furthermore, while he hasn’t exactly torn the game up, he has become a regular and respected player in Pokerati’s 1/2 nl/plo @HardRockPoker. Thus, I was delighted to see him take-it-down further, throwing projectiles from press row to earn proper respect from Pauly, Benjo, and even the real professor, Shamus, who showed even gray-haired academics aren’t afraid to put it all on the line against any young or not-so-young poker challengers.

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Episode 41: Small Balls

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Sometime after midnight, we let it all hang out with the gang in the press box who engage in a silly, yet innocuous throwing-things prop bet that began with Pauly and a single piece of wadded up paper. Before everyone knew it, Benjo, Shamus, and ten other bored members of the press (both foreign and domestic) were joining the fray. Degen prop betting often keeps the free press sane during those late night insane hours, as Tim the Intern took down the inaugural Small Ball Cup.

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Gavin Smith is near the chip lead at the $2,500 Mixed Hold’em Final Table. (One of his remaining opponents, on the second-shortest stack, is Dwyte Pilgrim, a Pokerati Fantasy WSOP pick in 2009; again, we were just ahead of our time …) Phil Hellmuth knows both these spots well … and naturally, we understand why Hellmuth wasn’t gonna make it the whole way for #12, and why Smith was setting himself up nicely for #1.

(Does Pauly even know the shifts in Ole G Smith’s backing set-up? Do you?)

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Episode 39: Hellmuth’s Non-Hold’em Final Table

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Dan happens to wander into the Rio at the exact time Phil Hellmuth advanced to the final table of the PLO/8 event. Pauly and Dan head up to the Beef Jerky lounge to get a better look at the Hellmuthian circus.

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Episode 40: Gavin Smith’s Ass Crack

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Pauly and Dan saunter into the Pavilion Ballroom, where they rarely hang out. During the recording of this particular episode, they’re ambushed by a couple of the entities from Wicked Chops Poker. At some point, a discussion about a masseuse working on Gavin Smith’s upper ass region breaks out.

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Episode 37: Benjo Busting

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After weeks of watching poker, Benjo can’t resist the urge to play and signs up for the $100 11 pm “brogdig” tournament. We learn first that Benjo is actually a very weak player. And then we learn he’s been doing some undercover reporting at the cash tables, where he learns that the Rio occasionally has an overaggressive rake.

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Episode 38: Jerry Buss’s iPhone

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When LA Lakers owner Jerry Buss comes to Las Vegas to celebrate his National Championship by playing the $10k HORSE, he needs a little juice for his iPhone, which Benjo graciously supplies. He doesn’t try to hawk it though, instead seeing a long-term plan complete with courtside tickets and the digits of multiple barely legal vixens.

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Sorry to leave any ‘Ati-first readers hanging for a week without easiest access to the latest Tao of Pokerati take on happenings at the World Series. Of course you all are smart … and presumably know to find any episode you (or I) may have missed in the Tao of Pokerati podcast archives here. Seriously, check ‘em out … there’ve been some good ones.

Pauly skipped town a couple days ago … I guess with Rio security responding to all the billboard advertising around their property for Dr. Reefer, the Happiness Consultants, Legal Cannabis Scrips ‘R Us, etc. by cracking down on 420 breaks at the WSOP, Pauly decided if he was gonna leave the Rio, he might as well keep on driving (then flying) to the nearest Phish concert.

But no worries … He’ll be back in a few days; in the meantime Benjo and I gotcha covered. Last night, with two final tables going on at the main stage, we found ourselves in one of those spots where two additional bits of exciting Amazon action were taking place simultaneously, with galleries overlapping in a single aisle as remaining players were well past their bubbles and getting nearer to big-money prizes.

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Episode 35: French Man Kissing (w Benjo)

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There’s a real s’affrontent going on in the $10k heads-up, with Bertrand Grospellier, arguably the #1 player in France right now, battling Benjo’s pal Lucovic Lacay, currently the top contender capable of dethroning him. All the excitement has the French guys on the rail madly … kissing? Benjo breaks down the questionable nature of these public displays of Euro-affection.

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NOTE: Lucovic would end up beating Elky, who earned $38k in the Round of 16, while Lacay moved on to the final 8 where he is guaranteed at least $92k.

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Episode 36: Touching Tom Senior (w Benjo)

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DonkeyBomber’s going deep in the Seniors event, but did Dan ruin his chances for a bracelet in “the oxygen event) with some inappropriate touching? Player superstitions aside, there’s some real concern about Toothless Bob, who was going into this event as the Team Pokerati favorite but may or may not have shown up to play.

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