We know about Jamie Gold’s poker residency at the Tropicana in Las Vegas — where he can be found playing 1/2 and apparently trying to fill the poker world’s Professor void by offering lessons that cost about as much as a college education. (The Jamie Gold Poker Room official launch party, btw, is Feb 17!)

But what about the rest of ‘em?

You can currently find Jerry Yang, the 2007 WSOP’s biggest winner and #20 on the all-time poker tournament money list, bussing tables while commanding an otherwise lackadaisical staff (according to Yelp) at Pocket 8s Sushi & Grill in central California. Um, pass the yum-yum sauce?

Via Pokerati’s resident Vegas grinder-thug @AndrewNeeme:

Poker Fish: You wouldn’t believe how many of Jerry Yang’s relatives are always hitting him up for free sushi.

I’m sure Jamie Gold and Las Vegas will eventually become friends. I for one have a whole new respect for the WSOP-champ in Residence @TropLVPoker after hearing his interview on Donkdown; and philosophically, he’s trying to bring some of the same things to the Tropicana that the Pokerati Game tries to bring to the Palms. But still …

Really … $1k an hour? I mean that’s not quite Carrot Top money, and supposedly Gold’s already had five students pony up … but jeesh … you’d think at that rate they could at least afford a nicer sign!

Additional Resources

• [video] Eliot Spitzer hooker money
• [video] Wall Street Journal on $1,000/hr attorneys
• Richest comedians/Carrot Top net worth

I’m sure this has absolutely nothing to do with anything, obv … but was going through some old pics and came across this screen-grab from July 2006 (some two months before the UIGEA)… when I hadn’t yet discovered the purpose of labeling images more descriptively than just wsop28.jpg, and the Feds apparently hadn’t yet figured out how to hide an IP address.

At the time, Phil Hellmuth had just won his 10th bracelet, no one thought twice about playing on Ultimate Bet, everyone in poker still had money, and Jamie Gold (of all people) seemed to represent the very worst poker had to offer. Ahh, the good ole days … even Russ Hamilton was presumed innocent then.

Though I hardly recall why specifically, something about this visitor seemed peculiar enough for me to wanna preserve the moment. ith the benefit of hindsight, I’m sure I was just kidding.

Here’s a storyline that ESPN somehow missed/didn’t feed us on the media-prep conference call … It’s a very Jewish WSOP main event final table.

The Jewish Daily Forward points out what may or may not be a statistical anomaly: Four of the November Nine — Jeff Shulman, Steve Begleiter, Eric Buchman, and Kevin Schaffel — happen to speak Hebrew, at least during family holidays.

From a stack perspective, these Jewish players control 49.6 percent of all the chips in play. How stereotypical …

The J-article also offers a rich history of Jews in the game … from Jack Strauss to Jamie Gold … and most recently Barry Shulman’s Yom Kippur victory at WSOP-E. Back in the day, of course, the World Series was all about Jews vs. Texans, but Texans have been sucking it up in recent years now the game has a more widespread international appeal that has prevented any one region from owning pwning it.

Full Disclosure: I used to make an annual pilgrimage to a Dallas synagogue in an effort to bring people with money to the Lodge convert non-gentiles to the poker way. So yeah …

ALT HED: נובמבר תשע עצה: בית על היהודים

It was a seemingly epic battle for a queen’s ransom that went well into the wee hours GMT … old-school poker in Poker’s N€w World, if you will.

And making his second consecutive go at the WSOP-E main-event title, runner-up Daniel Negreanu would come up two outs short of being “happy” that he just became the biggest winner in the history of tournament poker.

Negreanu knocked out six of the other final table-ists to get heads-up. And yet in the end Barry Shulman — CardPlayer’s overlord emeritus — held strong in a war of presumably tight aggression to win £801,603 (= $1,283,687 USD). That, of course, is almost exactly the amount his son Jeff has been guaranteed for making the November Nine. No added pressure/father’s shadow issues for sure.

Negreanu’s second-place finish and £496k payday propelled him to the top of the all-time tourney-money leaderboard, passing Jamie Gold and Phil Ivey — who now needs to finish 6th-or-better this November to re-pass Negreanu as the winningest tournament player ever.

(Thanks, Lance, for the deets!)

Here’s video of the final two hands from The Casino at the Empire, Leicester Square:

(If for some reason the above vid disappears, you can find the original page here.)

For those of us debating how ESPN and PokerPROductions (a different film crew than the gang producing WSOP-LV episodes) should do their broadcasting jobs … it seems this 6-day event will be shown in 2 hours, not 20 … and that includes squeezing in the Caesar’s Cup! While that may not seem to do poker-junkie justice to a tournament that kept a bunch of us jaded, immune-to-tourney-hype types checking in on the action for more than 16 hours of final table play, I suppose movie-length could work, too.

UPDATE: Clarification of ESPN’s programming intent in the comments below (from ESPN sources who would know). They plan to give it way too much more coverage than implied above.

Click below for Nolan’s official write-up/script:

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I’m of course looking forward to whatever Dream Team Poker’s next event is … and plausibly defending Team Tao of Pokerati’s title. Seriously, having played in three Dream Team tourneys now (winning one), and taken part as either a player or analyst (?) in a few other team-concept no-limit hold’em freezeouts, I have some genuine strategy thoughts on this format … and fugk, just as much authority on it as Matt Parvis or Jamie Gold.

Anyhow, check out their rockin’ new promotional vid from the WSOP team tournament … they’ve got a few different musical varieties on their site and YouTube, but I liked this one best:

Starring Kenna James … with splash appearances by Lacey Jones, Liz Lieu, Jerry Yang, Dennis Phillips, Susie Isaacs, Alex Outhred, Barry Greenstein, David Williams, Evelyn Ng, Gavin Smith, Bryan Micon, Pam Brunson, Jose Canseco, et al.

ALT HED: Pauly Sniffs Cash

Setting foot in a casino card room for the first time since the WSOP yesterday, I did so to support my local L.A. poker spot The Bicycle Casino. The lovely Marketing Director Kelley O’Hara invited me to play in the media tournament in the brand new Event Center to kick off the month of Legends of Poker tournaments. While I opted not to play and only observed for a short time, I must say the Event Center is a vast improvement over the tournament room of the past. The spacious room is bright, welcoming, and about as elegant as Bell Gardens, California can get. Players at Legends events will be very pleasantly surprised.

Seems that about 180-200 people turned out to play in the tournament, including players like Annie Duke, Joe Reitman, Men Nguyen, and Jamie Gold. Some of the celebs spotted were Camryn Manheim and Sara Rue, along with local TV newscasters like hottie Phillip Palmer. It was no surprise that Duke took it down, though, and donated the winnings to Ante Up for Africa. (I get the feeling she’s really dedicated to that there organization.)

The Day 1c field has returned from its dinner break a few minutes ago, with two more levels to play today. The difference between this field and the first two Day 1′s is that the field as well as tomorrow’s field will play 5 two-hour levels. When Day 2a commences Tuesday, they’ll also play 5 two-hour levels, while the Day 2b field will play 4 levels. A field of 1,697 were registered today, and there’s a possibility that Monday’s Day 1d field could be sold out. If not, it will certainly be the largest Day 1 field with well about 2,300 already registered.

Notable names already eliminated: Annie Duke, Daniel Negreanu, Evelyn Ng, John Caldwell, Lacey Jones, Chino Rheem, and Jamie Gold. The unofficial leader at this time is Jeff Lisandro, looking for his 4th bracelet this year, leading the field with 132,000 in chips. Other notables with stacks include Hevad Khan (94,000), Joe Hachem (88,000), David Singer (78,000), Justin Bonomo (56,800), Brett “gank” Jungblut (51,000), Scotty Nguyen (49,000), and Dan Harrington (47,500). Other chip counts and live updates can be found at the wsop.com site here.

More updates later this evening from Team Pokerati, and another update from me in the morning recapping who’s left at the end of the night.

A few recaps while several tournaments are on their dinner breaks:

The 40th Annual $40,000 NL Holdem final table has 4 players remaining. Greg Raymer, Vitaly Lunkin, Isaac Haxton and Dani Stern make up the final four to take home nearly $2m and the first open gold bracelet of the WSOP. Ted Forrest, Noah Schwartz, Lex Veldhius, Alec Torelli and Justin Bonomo were eliminated earlier today from the final table.

Speaking of Raymer, the WSOP Champions Invitational got underway earlier this afternoon. 20 of the 25 surviving champions accepted their RSVPs to be filmed under the bright lights of the ESPN cameras. Within the first orbit, 2006 winner Jamie Gold was the first player eliminated, while 2003 winner Chris Moneymaker watched his 10,000 chip stack dwindle erode before he finally busted. Raymer was able to get a couple of hands in before returning to the $40k final table. Six more one-hour levels or until the final table of nine return Monday afternoon.

More recaps on the next page:
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One of the first “big” WSOP events will be the special, invitational Champions tourney … a non-bracelet freeroll for all previous main event champions, which will be one of only four televised ESPN events. This made-for-TV No-Limit Hold’em brouhaha — where players are competing for a shiny trophy and a red Corvette — should give the old-dog pros a chance to remind the 21st century WSOP millionaires who’s really boss … and the Varkonyis and Golds and Yangs a chance to say, “Hey, I didn’t just get lucky, Doyle Biznatch!”

27 players are eligible … and almost all have pre-registered. Bobby Baldwin ’78 has RSVP’d in the negative. But there’s one interesting name on the list of non-confirmeds* — well actually there’re five, but one of these is not like the others … in fact, as a member of the WSOP PAC, he’s probably on Jeffrey Pollack’s speed dial:

Mansour Maltoubi ’90
Hamid Dastmalchi ’92
Russ Hamilton ’94
Noel Furlong ’99
Chris Ferguson ’00

None of these are holdouts, from what we’re hearing … just MIA. (Though we’re not so sure the WSOP is looking that hard for Russ, because they could always give his invitation to Layne Flack.)

Wicked Chops is on the hunt for them here.

That’s the unconfirmed word on the street … despite what seemed like a semi-big win for Team Aced/Gold at Dream Team Poker … Dream Team can probably go ahead and retire that jersey set, because the new online poker site and former WSOP main event champion supposedly have broken up.

No details yet … just third-hand information over here. But I’m hearing that either Gold said hey, time to pay up and they didn’t have the cash, or Aced said, yo, Jamie, where are all those players you promised us?

Either way … assuming that some element of the above is true, is it shocking that this didn’t last?

We try not to engage in too much schadenfreude here at Pokerati, but the last post about Amarillo Slim’s efforts to restore his stature in the poker world has me contriving a poll in my head about who are/were the most undesirable people in/from poker.

Current Poker Sith Lords
Russ Hamilton — guilty til proven innocent, and with good cause.
Ernie Scherer III — he’s still innocent til proven guilty, but considering that he faces the death penalty for killing his parents to pay off poker debts — and the last 10 Google searches found on his computer were “countries that don’t extradite to the U.S.“, I think we can rest assured that he will not become a Full Tilt pro anytime soon.

Dishonorable Mentions
James McDaniel — this Dallas poker room operator was convicted of killing an ex-cop, engaged in collusion in Oklahoma (my personal observation and unproven accusation), and is currently on trial for supplying drugs to one of his railbirds who ended up OD’d-dead in a portable toilet.

Reformed Reputations
Jamie Gold
Justin Bonomo
Dutch Boyd

Jury Still Out
David Sklansky — technically crime-free, but young aspiring female players are hardly flocking to his tutelage.
Amarillo Slim — he says he’s not guilty, and his family and a lie detector now apparently agree, even though his criminal record implies otherwise.
Layne Flack — everybody seems to like Layne, but unless he’s working undercover a la Poker Brasco, hanging with Russ Hamilton surely won’t help him get sponsored by Ultimate Bet.

So who else? Really, I’m not looking for a bunch of potentially libelous name-calling … but I am looking to create a list of once and future poker bad-guys, and maybe a rating system for criminals and outcasts and offenses that may or may not attract the attention of law enforcement, but still result in scorn and contempt from fellow poker players.

Pauly is a better faster writer than I am — so it’s always good to have him in town to make me work less. Read his detailed recap of Dream Team Poker weekend here and his less-detailed first impressions here.

Likewise, over at Wicked Chops, they’ve got the Hottie Beat covered … and PokerListings has manhandled the actual tournament action.

Tao of Pokerati Dream Team teammate Shaniac has some great music to listen to while you’re waiting for more.

Meanwhile, Team Aced did their thing to keep Aced.com in the public eye as a potentially legitimate newfangled online poker room with celeb-pro representative Jamie Gold, LV poker-room man Houston Waldie, and Gold-girlfriend Ashley Nataupsky — who is still alive for the individual championship — locking up the team title earlier today.

The vibe on Day 2 (final three tables) was quite distinct from Day 1 (field of 444 playing down to 27). From an informed source on the ground at Caesar’s:

It was great. People really had to watch the standings when making plays. They might have had pot odds on a few calls, but people were laying down hands to hold. It turned into one big last longer prop bet.

With a cold coming on, I juiced up on cold medicine and headed down to Commerce Casino last night for the pre-tournament WPT Invitational cocktail party. In more of a stuffy-headed fog now, I give you a few observations from the festivities:

William Hung was the first “celebrity” I noticed, as he arrived as soon as the red carpet was ready for action. And the poor guy was the only one from the red carpet featured by Perez Hilton today, and not featured in a particularly good way.

Food was excellent as usual, with a random assortment of Asian and Greek set-ups, along with the yum-yum appetizers floating around the room on waiters’ trays.

No DJ in the outdoor area like last year’s event, but it actually made for a more conversation-friendly atmosphere on the patio.

Wicked Chops scored seats in the tournament. I spent way too much time trying to figure out how that happened.

Reports of the demise of the Phil Laak/Jennifer Tilly relationship were evidently untrue, as the two looked typically couple-y as usual – Jennifer in a beautiful outfit, Phil in saggy jeans and a hoodie.

Some celebrities on the “confirmed” list were no-shows, such as Camryn Manheim, Montel Williams, and Nelly. (Yes, I was more than disappointed about one of those absences!)

CORRECTION: Manheim was there, and Jen was still disappointed. -DM

Shannon Elizabeth and Derek Hough are still a couple and just as adorable as ever, with Shannon checking on Derek and his amateur poker experiences throughout the evening.

Contrary to all reports from the tournament, Antonio Esfandiari was not the first person eliminated from the tournament, as Mike “SirWatts” Watson (former WPT champion) was out of the tournament and standing with us at the bar when that announcement was made. Ouch.

New to my social radar were Mike Watson and Shane Schleger, both of whom were introduced to me by Gavin Griffin and Kristin Roberts and very nice to chat with.

Also met Jamie Gold for the first time, who was extremely friendly and psyched about his Aced Poker affiliation, though my question about his possible ownership in the company was met with the standard “details of the contract cannot be disclosed” line. Good brief chat anyway. (His calling card gives him the title “Poker Philanthropist.”)

Mekhi Phifer took the reigns during the rebuy period, grabbing the mic and encouraging players to rebuy (or even just donate) to his charity, The Vine Group, to help educational efforts in Africa. He was a great spokesperson for the organization and raised $78,270 for it, while managing to maintain his usual humble but outrageously sexy demeanor.

Where in the world is Jamie Gold these days? Maybe he’s looking for the plethora of jobs that aren’t available in Hollywood. Could be that he’s trying to develop “America’s Unemployed Hot Chicks.” But in the world of poker, he does have a gig. Bankroll Boost is reporting that Gold has signed on as a sponsored player at Aced Poker.

Say what?

Good for Gold in finding a gig in these tough times. Honestly, kudos to anyone who is securing work instead of being on the unfortunate end of losing it right now. Maybe we’ll hear more about Aced Poker in the near future, if the site decides to promote him (which they have yet to do – Aced has no mention of him on the pages of its site thus far). And come to think of it, Betfair wasn’t big until it signed Annette Obrestad and Sorel Mizzi, and Cake Poker still hasn’t signed any players to a roster but continues to gain popularity. Aced Poker is clearly trying to work its way into the upper echelon of sites in the American market by signing a recognizable name to promote it. Keep your eyes open for “Aced is Gold” and other oh-so-clever promotions.