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.

This could turn out to be quite the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa thing, with less Creatine. Daniel Negreanu and Phil Ivey could be going back-and-forth at the very top of the Hendon Mob leaderboard for all-time tournament winnings.

Ivey just re-passed Negs by finishing 2nd in the Aussie Millions $100k event.

Here’s the all-time leaderboard (not yet updated).

[via WCP]

BTW, I’m pretty sure the winner, Dan Shak, was not the same guy who helped send Beth Shak on her renegade red-carpet/no-carpet milf path. If so, he sure has aged since the divorce:

UPDATE: I could be wrong. I was confusing Dan Shak with Bill Gazes, one of the other milfly departeds in poker:

OMG. Is that a nipple + beaver peek? While this photoshoot may juxtapose troublesomely with our “Talk to Your Kids about Poker” post … maybe not … at least not any more so than pop-culture characters in music, movies, Japanese anime, or regular-ole-TV in Europe.

Beth Shak should so have a sponsorship deal with Cougar Cruises.

For those who missed our debut special-for-the-WSOP Monday episode live, here’s the podcast … where The Poker Beat crew waxes poetic about Phil Ivey’s bracelet, Daniel Negreanu’s non-bracelet, non-Finnish national anthems, Ladies events, what makes an “online” player, and Joe Sebok’s lie detector prop bet over his knowledge of Beth Shak’s marital status or lack thereof. Also, Chops shows up to declare this World Series the “Year of the Brother” … or maybe it’s the Year of “tha Brothah” … but either way, leave it to the Entities to celebrate poker in all its multicultural greatness.

on PokerRoad

The Poker Beat
Caldwell, Michalski, Nemeth, Chops, Stapleton
6/08/09

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This episode, btw, marks my personal umpteenth appearance on The Poker Beat — making me the “last man standing” amongst hosts and panelists (Go free labor!) and the only guy to appear on every episode since the show’s inception. While that factoid may mark a certain pathos, I’d also like to point out that I am the only one — even with all those extra minutes — who has yet to be called out by the Insider for a factual misstatement.

That’s not to say I haven’t made any errors — made a big one about something really important a month ago, but I guess it just slipped by our wheezey, phlegmy ombudsman.

This hedline could refer to thousands of players, of course, but I’m talkin’ bout Pokerati’s own Donkey … who busted out on the near last hand. He re-raised with a broadway open-ender, got called with a flush draw, and a club on the turn did him in. Nice go, though Donk!

By the way, he apparently drove Beth Shak nuts — his K-J suckout against hre A-J really set her off. By the way, fyi Donkey, she gave me some of your tells. You apparently blink your eyes a lot when the flop hits you … and you stack your chips individually when you are about to make a move. Just sayin’ …

Argh, it’s getting frustrating … so much stuff going on that it’s hard to keep up, let alone post about it. So here’s a bit of everything:

6,844 entrants in the 2008 WSOP main event.

I jut had a wonderful discussion with WPT honcho Steve Lipscomb. He didn’t laugh when I asked him if he was looking for a job with the WSOP.

Team Pokerati updates:

Tom Schneider is hurting. Like 7k in chips last we checked.

Donkey texts in (we’re still getting his CSR set up) — “Back down to 20k after 2nd level.. Thought Micon was playing AK. he had 77. I had 66. Cost 4k to see river”

Damn, that sucks. And oh yeah, Donkey is playing with Micon from Neverwin two or three seats to his left, and Beth Shak on the other end of the table. (Donkey doesn’t know who she is — but he is aware that she is all patched up.

Jerry Randack was doing fine last I checked. Saw him skillfully (albeit a bit cautiously) play Ace-rag with an ace on the flop, and build a nice pot to the point that he got a really nice call by the time he rivered the nut flush.

No report on Robert Goldfarb. Serves him right for not wearing his patch. But he is texting in his status on breaks.

The Big Randy looks to be playing very comfortably … with about 26k in chips.

More TK, of course. The big buzz of the day wasn’t about Phil Hellmuth‘s pro wrestling-esque army-tank entrance … it was about the presence of Ultimate Fighters, including Chuck Liddell and Forest Griffin, who won a big fight just last night.

Um, go poker!

UPDATE: There was a rumor about some smaller agents being shaken down by a bigger one. It didn’t check out, however, on first call … but there’s gotta be something to it — the agent battles are getting harsh as all compete for a piece of nine heretofore unknown needles in a a haystack of 6,844.

We discussed a poorly received tourney idea on Beyond the Table a year ago — the concept being a “men’s minority event.” I loved the idea because we’ve all played dudes-only before and women have ladies tourneys … but while all women players have been the only representative of their gender at a table before, that’s a dynamic that guys simply don’t get to experience.

Psychology would be fun, results would be interesting …Logistics was the tough part — how to limit the field to 10 (or 15) percent men and still attract the necessary entries. But one thing we never considered was a simple invitational sit-n-go.

So much to my delight, the new episode of Poker after Dark just came on and lo and behold the players this week are Gus Hansen, Vanessa Rousso, J.J. Liu, Clonie Gowen, Beth Shak, and Erica Schoenberg. Very cool — well cast with Gus, who knows they know he knows they know he can be a tad horny influenced by his respect for the ladies.

“We should make all the guys play this format one time,” Clonie just said. Barack Obama presumably agrees, as he just sat down for a very similar 6-handed sit-n-go on The View:

(L to R) Vanessa Rousso, Clonie Gowen, Gus Hansen, J.J. Liu, Beth Shak, and Erica Schoenberg appear this week on Poker after Dark.