(Woot! Congrats, Julie!)

According to Julie, men don’t know what it’s like to have to dodge tilt at a final table on a heavy-flow day … but she didn’t let that get in the way of her finding success. With just the main event left to play — making it still anybody’s game, but statistically unlikely that anyone passes her — here’s the breakdown of the top women in the WSOP POY standings:

1. Julie Schneider – 65 pts
2. Vanessa Rousso – 60 pts
3. Millie Shiu – 60 pts
4. Annie Duke – 40 pts
5. Jennifer Harman – 37 pts

Karridy’s in Oklahoma this weekend, attending the WSOP Academy at WinStar … (note to Texas legislators) … and, sure enough, after a day of schooling, he won their big tournament last night. I don’t know the details — I think it was like 40something players, two of whom may or may not have included instructors Greg Raymer and Mike Gracz … and the prize is something like a fancied-up trip to Vegas and seat in WSOP-A’s tournament of champions. Anyhow, nice job K-man! That’s 2-for-2 for him when representing Team Pokerati.

ALT HED: Karridy Don’t Need No … Edu-ca-tion

Oh, wait, I’m forgetting about the two WSOP 1500′s where he busted out early on Day 1. But regardless, in what is something of a rarity, the entire Beyond the Table hosting crew (SitNGo Steve excused) was playing poker Saturday night. While Karridy was winning his tourney, I was kicking a little ass playing 1/2 online, booking my second $1,000 win in two sessions (might I actually have learned something at cash games college?), and Tom was playing the main event of the LAPC, where he won his seat via satellite but would soon be busting out not too far into Day 1, thereby making him happy for his amateur BTT cohorts, but not so happy about being the biggest loser of the bunch.

Jay Busbee (from Bluff) has a good State of the Poker Union address on ESPN.com, where he officially declares the poker boom dead. Also interesting to see ESPN, for the first time I remember in a long-long while, running (non-affiliate) PokerStars ads. [ESPN.com]

Poker Shrink Cranky Olde Coot has a good post wondering why FIDPA still hasn’t made the “new rules” they’ve long ballyhooed public. [PokerBlog.com]

Full Disclosure: FIDPA is one of my MySpace friends. [MySpace.com]

Liberal columnist Michael Kinsley shares a story about John McCain going on some extremely unpresidential tilt at the craps table. (The TJ Cloutier of Politics? Tons of success, a sometimes dangerous love of craps, and never quite able to win the Big One?) [The Daily Beast, via Huffington Post, via Short-Stacked Shamus]

Beyond the Table has a new home online. [Podcast.com]

I think Dr. Pauly’s starting to get a little miffed at me for not working out some production kinks and posting our re-constituted incarnation of Tao of Pokerati, but I think I can make him feel better by simply reading his blog. [Tao of Poker]

With all the talk of what really goes into a world-record endurance poker session, I forgot to send y’all to live-forum coverage of The Poker Den 3 — PartyPoker’s 36-hour high-stakes televised cash game. [MatchroomPoker.com]

Dutch Boyd apparently bought Steve Hall’s Pokerfolio in a semi-hostile takeover. Poor Steve … but he has found a new home for his poker updates/pictures of attractive Asian female dealers. [Pokerfolio.Spruz.com]

Also, the X-10 electronic table — a knock-off of the PokerTek PokerPro popping up in so many places — sharing the same name as a hidden camera used by so many pervy peeping toms before a few lawsuits encouraged them to re-market themselves as a security device. [SlipperyBrick.com]

And long overdue, here’s a great tale of a totally degenerate poker blogger/gambler rescuing his bankroll by poetically chasing/hitting the Station Casinos bad-beat jackpot. [TheTrooper97, via Up for Poker]

There’s more, too, coagulating in my bookmarks and inbox. News stories, forum threads, tourney results … Who knows … maybe I’ll get to them for your reading pleasure, but as is always the case from Head Slacker at this Little-Ole Poker Blog, no promises. It’s good to be back with you all.

LATE ADDITIONS:

Lacey Jones is getting ready for her co-hosting duties of Real Deal, the pokery interactive musical at The Venetian, which kicks off next week. [PokerListings.com via LasVegasAdvisor.com]

She also hosted an interesting event at Cathouse (as simply Lacey J) where women showed up for a seductive-attire contest where the winner got a boob job. [Photobucket.com]

Meanwhile, there was a hardcore SWAT-team poker raid in Fayetteville, NC. A firsthand account as well as some non-poker media coverage here and here. [Triangle Poker Journal]

In the grand tradition of Rocky Balboa, Return to Mayberry, and The Brady Girls Get Married, your favorite poker podcast returned today with a brand-spankin’ new episode. Five months after announcing their “retirement” — has it really been five months? seems like three — the group collectively determined the whole is worth more than the sum of the parts, and have thus decided to try and recreate the adventure, the thrill, the magic that is Beyond the Table.

Or, as Tom puts it, “We all got bored with our lives.”

The return show finds our intrepid trio (plus Sit-N-Go Steve) in classic BTT form, managing to cover a wide range of topics despite (or because) Dan is sitting on his mute button. Following the awkward reintroductions (“uh… do I know you?”), the fellas discuss the recent WCOOP successes of Tom (a.k.a., “luvgamble”), team poker tourneys, political prop-betting, the differing concerns of amateurs and pros at the WSOP, and UB cheating scandal rumors.

They even get down to brass tacks and answer some poker-related listener calls, suggesting that if you were to call the listener line — (888) 820-8091 — they might well answer your question sometime during the next six months or so, too! You can also email ’em at theshow(at)beyondthetable(dot)com.

Click here to listen/download

This show is the antithesis of Beyond the Table when it comes to intellect, humor, and style, and at a well-produced hour long — some of it reading of books about poker philosophy and literature — it’s pretty much the opposite of Tao of Pokerati, time- and speed-wise. And yet for some reason, as I’m waiting for my turn to call in to a non-poker conference call and am catching up on filing, I love it. Think it has something to do with sitting alone in the office and not being the smartest person in the room.

Unlike any other bubble boy, after 3+days of solid play, Wattel just missed out on a $124k payday and instead ended up the same -$50k that his fellow Arizona buddy Tom found after only a day-and-a-half. I’m sick to my stomach and I hardly know the guy. (You may recall his similarly unfortunate 6th place finish in the 2007 WPT Championship … my guess is he’s currently tilt-gorging on Corona’s, nickel slots, and old archived episodes of Beyond the Table.)

The remaining players:

Table 32

Seat 1: Patrick Bueno 730,000
Seat 2: Huck Seed 900,000
Seat 3: Joseph Michael 575,000
Seat 4: Scotty Nguyen 1,050,000
Seat 5: Phil Ivey 635,000
Seat 6: Barry Greenstein 1,300,000
Seat 7: Doyle Brunson 60,000
Seat 8: David Bach 800,000

Table 39

Seat 1: Erick Lindgren 355,000
Seat 2: Raymond Davis 1,200,000
Seat 3: Michael DeMichele 1,010,000
Seat 4: Lyle Berman 1,100,000
Seat 5: Andy Bloch 120,000
Seat 6: Ralph Perry 1,635,000
Seat 7: Daniel Negreanu 1,480,000
Seat 8: Matt Glantz 1,460,000

UPDATE: Karridy, SitnGo Steve, Ryan, Tom, and Dan are all in town … Karridy is already trying to see how many mikes he can hook up to his iPhone … Tom busted a couple hours ago out of the $10k World Championship of Omaha Hi-Lo, a bit shy of the money.

So please, enjoy the first episode of Tao of Pokerati … featuring Pauly of WSOP poker blogging fame, and yours truly … sharing the insight, wisdom and general frogginess of a Beyond the Table expat.

Episode 1: Game On!

By the way, so far at the WSOP, three separate people have approached me saying, “Are you Pauly?” Each time I’ve chuckled and laughed, because they weren’t even looking at my bald spot for the mistaken identity. Anyhow, shout out to Jenzilla, who was kind enough to deliver my new radio cohost pens.

3 of the BTT cast are at a charity tornament in Dallas vying to win a WSOP entry. The TD tells us that Home Depot donated a $100 (!?) hammer for any player who takes one down with Dan’s favorite hand. As its announced, a guy to my left says “sounds like one of Dan’s ideas”. Turns out that Whit is a pokerati reader and made me from the player list. A few moments later, SnG raises a limped pot with 72o and is rewarded with two pair on the flop. Here’s a pic of SnG just before he asked if there was a receipt.

Ok, so in my defense, I was actually out-of-town when Karridy posted his challenge.  The 9 days since I’ve been back in town? Karridy stole my other defense – so I’ll just go with “I’m a slacker”.

With my timeliness out of the way – let’s get back to the challenge.

I’m definitely a “Hell Yeah!” for another prop-bet challenge.  The loser “has to wear a dress all the way to Vegas”?  I’m gonna go with a big “NO” on that part:

1. You already frequently wear a dress as a fill-in for: Dan’s lover Sang; and for Tom’s daughters.  How then is that a punishment to you when you lose?
2. Now that you’ve decided to play in more than one event – we are flying out to Vegas at separate times.  How will I get good video to share with everyone of your traveling to Vegas in a dress if we aren’t on the same flights?
3. The terms of the first prop-bet state that the loser of that bet would be the one issuing the rematch.  So – the initial terms should come from me.
4. I’ve proven I’m a good sport when it comes to the prop-bets:
   
   so I don’t want to hear any bitching from you about how you won’t be able to wear a dress.

The inspiration for my challenge hit me as I was reading Pokerati on my mobile device from the shitter my “other office”.  It got me thinking of an old Beyond The Table episode where I was lamenting of how I was the only one of the crew who was not attending the 2007 WSOP.  I declared then that I would attend the 2008 WSOP.  As things tended to do on BTT - the conversation then went down the drain… literally.  While there, I promised that I would interview people “Senator Craig” style from the safety of my own stall – asking questions like “Do you know who Tom Schneider is?”.  I think an even better idea is that the loser of our prop-bet has to conduct interviews from a restroom frequented by tournament players at the Rio, with the audio then posted on a public website.  Some, or all, of the interview questions would come from suggestions from our fellow pokerati.

Here then is my official challenge (we can haggle on further specifics in private):

• SitNGoSteve to play Karridy in a best of 7 heads up match in No Limit Hold ‘Em. 
• The matches must be completed before May 30th, 2008.
• The loser will conduct interviews from a bathroom located in the Rio hotel in Las Vegas that is frequented by WSOP 2008 players.
• The interview(s) must be conducted between May 30th, 2008 and July 7th, 2008.
• The loser must conduct the interview from within a closed bathroom stall – it is NOT sufficient to just ask questions while in the bathroom (i.e. while people are washing their hands).
• The interview questions will mainly be comprised of, but not limited to, suggestions from our fellow pokerati.  Karridy and SitNGoSteve will finalize the specific questions before traveling to Las Vegas for the WSOP 2008.
• The official interview list will contain no less than 5 and no more than 10 questions.
• An interviewee is defined as a person who has answered and responded to all of the pre-defined interview questions OR has at least responded to the majority of the questions.
• The loser will interview no less than 3 people and will produce no less than 15 minutes of audio of interviewees responses.  The only exception is as interrupted by security or law enforcement.
• The loser can NOT utilize any written materials to communicate with an interviewee.  i.e. no slipping paper under the stalls that say things like “I lost a bet and have to interview people in the bathroom”.
• The audio must be published to a publicly consumable website within 14 days of the loser returning home from Las Vegas.
• The audio must be of “acceptable” quality.  i.e. the loser should place their recording device below the bathroom stall divider to hear their interviewees responses clearly.
• The winner, or a pre-defined appointee of the winner, will be present in a capacity that will verify that the loser met and honored the spirit of the above terms.

What say you Karridy?

p.s. California Jen: Karridy only shared his sushi with you because he doesn’t really like Sushi – so that shouldn’t stop you from rooting for me to win!

If you’ve heard my permanent Wolfman Jack impression while listening to Beyond The Table, you might not be surprised to learn that my voice is not naturally this sexy. I had a little help from my friends. Actually, I had a LOT of help. Before the age of 6, I had undergone over 30something surgeries on my throat and vocal chords. Some of those were emergency surgeries to open my airway, and some were simply maintenance to avoid more emergencies. The end result would be a voice that only a mother could love. Well, her and a disproportionately large number of black women. Apparently, I sound like this guy. But unfortunately, they usually look like this girl, and never like my new chocolate crush, this girl.

The bottom line is that the good people at Cook Children’s Hospital saved my life more than once, and I couldn’t be more pleased to tell you about the Jeremy’s Friends Poker Tournament, coming up on Saturday, May 31st @ 6pm.

How’s this for quality charity poker – 1′st place wins a Main Event entry w/airfare and hotel! Runner up gets a phat entry into the upcoming $3,000,000 tournament at Winstar, which I hear is being televised. There won’t be much fight for 3rd to 9th place, as EVERYBODY else at the final table will win $440 Super Satellite entries for the same Winstar mega tournament. Not bad, guys! Too bad we all know that charity poker is rigged!

If you are in the North Texas area and would like to battle it out against me and a few other do-gooders, contact Jeremy’s Friends by emailing: jeremysfriendspoker@gmail.com

I’m sure he’ll say that he was busy at work… Whatever. Stephen, if you’re truly afraid of the dress, you can always get iced out.

The rest of you haterz can get yo Poker Grillz HERE.

Well, here’s what looks to be a ray of hope. (At least for those of us who like to play online poker.)

Late this week, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) proposed a new House bill, H.R. 5767, the sole purpose of which is to stop the feds from finalizing regulations for the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. The bill comes on the heels of last week’s Congressional hearing at which multiple witnesses — including several representatives of U.S. payment systems and a couple of those involved with authoring the regs — communicated pretty loudly the unfeasibility of the UIGEA in its current state.

In fewer words than this post contains, H.R. 5767 pithily prohibits “the Secretary of the Treasury and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from proposing, prescribing, or implementing any regulation” the feds come up with regarding the UIGEA. As yesterday’s press release from the House Financial Services Committee states, “it was clear at the [April 2] hearing that the regulations are unworkable for the financial services industry, and this bill would, therefore prohibit their implementation.“

No word as yet on how fast this sucker may climb its way up the Congressional ladder, but given the overwhelming response against the UIGEA following last week’s hearing, it seems H.R. 5767 may have a lot more initial backers than those other anti-UIGEA bills (like Frank’s Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act).

We’re happy, right? Okay, so we’re not laughing ’til we wet ourselves. But we are smiling again. I guess there’s life beyond Beyond the Table . . . .

Some of you have been wondering, why no new episodes of Beyond the Table? Tom, Karridy, and I have been wondering the same thing. It’s been a good run, and with drinks in the air, three guys who clearly love/hate the sounds of their own voices are calling it podcast quits.

Back when we started, our show about poker but not really about poker stood out as revolutionary in a sea of lame poker interviewcasts with questionable audio quality. Soon after iPod sales were booming as more and more of the world got hooked on downloading poker audio with funny intros and Angry Julie cameos. But Tom couldn’t handle the celebrity and Karridy developed a crack addiction lives got busy and producers for Beyond the Table fared about as well as drummers for Spinal Tap. The show hired Shamus at a fraction of a Cambodian farmer’s wage to pump up our numbers — did he ever get his T-shirt? — but with a new generation of poker podcasts getting better and stronger (Lou Kreiger, Gary Wise, 2+2, Pocket Fives, Ante Up, Poker Road, et al) old-school payola wasn’t enough to save us from going out on the podcast bubble.

Listen below to a heretofore unpublished episode (recorded on 2-27, my dream flop) as your favorite semi-amateur yammerers phone it in for the last and final-ish time:

Beyond the Table: Fin

Thanks for listening via RSS, iTunes, play-in-popup, and direct download … we already miss ourselves.

You can still prank call Karridy on the Beyond the Table listener line at 888-820-8091.

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.

Click here to listen/watch.

For all its problems with audio quality, Hold’em Radio was first when it came to giving poker ramblers a home for their voices. Beyond the Table got its start there, as did Lou Krieger’s Keep Flopping Aces. While the BTT crew has been independent for about a year and will presumably stay that way, other passionate podcasters may likely follow in Lou’s footsteps and defect to Rounders Radio. I’ll be personally curious to hear the difference. Because while we’ve enjoyed doing BTT on our own, can’t say that we have fully mastered the audio process yet. Just last week we recorded probably the funniest “Angry Julie” segment in audio history … only we didn’t. I mean the new software said it was recording, but …

Internet radio is hard!