Suze Orman had another poker player call in to her “Can I Afford It?” segment seeking her approval to buy into a $1,200 tourney in Las Vegas. Young guy. Spoiler Alert: Quickest denial ever!

LOL, apparently Suze doesn’t understand that players like Brian are “good for the game.”

It’s always generally amusing when poker pros semi-catch the attention of those charged with letting us know about celebrities showing up at various locales around town. Yesterday, at the Palms:

Former MLB athlete and manager, Pete Rose dined at N9NE Steakhouse inside Palms Casino Resort Saturday night (10.3.09). Wearing a white dress shirt, blue jeans and white alligator boots, he joined his friends Mike Bertolini (sports memorabilia agent), Todd Brunson (professional poker legend) and Brunson’s son Doyle. They gathered for a short while to enjoy some cappuccino, leaving a little after 10 p.m.

Todd really is a legend when you think about it … but didn’t realize he had a coffee-drinking squirt named Doyle, LOL. A little curious what they musta been talking about with Pete Rose and a sports memorabilia agent. Perhaps Rose is thinking about making a go at the Poker Hall of Fame?

Las Vegas businessman, poker player, and one-time candidate for Lt. Governor of Nevada, Bob Stupak died today in Las Vegas of leukemia. He was 67-years old.

KVBC of Las Vegas printed the news release:

BOB STUPAK, LONG-TIME LAS VEGAN, DEVELOPER OF THE STRATOSPHERE, PASSES AWAY AT 67

LAS VEGAS – Bob Stupak, who is best known for revolutionizing the Las Vegas Strip with the development of The Stratosphere, passed away today at the age of 67.

Stupak was with close family at the Desert Springs Hospital this afternoon when medical maladies, including leukemia, took his life at 1:15 p.m. Per Stupak’s request, he will be cremated and there will not be a funeral.

More…

The Business Week article about the Asian poker boom referenced here also has a photo-sidebar about the 20 Biggest Casinos in the World. Pretty cool, and interesting. I’ve listed them in order below — a few surprising results — but click here to check out the pics and for all sorts of other interesting data about the largest gamble-gamble joints (in terms of gaming floor space) on the planet.

UPDATE: BW left out WinStar (Oklahoma), which is bigger than many might think.

More…

Pauly and Benjo are on site in the Amazon room to discuss what really may or may not have gone down on Day 1d. It wasn’t pretty, but at the same time, kinda a beautiful thing, no? On to Day 2a (and 2b), where the real carnage begins.

Tao of Pokerati at the 40th WSOP
Las Vegas, NV

Episode 11.30: The Day 1d Debacle (feat. Benjo)
5:51

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Union talks with Benjo are going well — we still haven’t come to complete resolution, but it’s good we’re still all at the table — and thus, to the tune of the Star-Spangled Banner on American Independence Day / La Quatrième de Juillet, he joins Pauly to give a report from Day 1B as Doyle Brunson gets cards in the air … But not before the sometimes-Angry Frenchman is put on self-loathing tilt by a fucking wanker someone wearing a Zidane jersey and America’s insistence on calling soccer football.

Tao of Pokerati at the 40th WSOP
Las Vegas, NV

Episode 11.29: Poker de la Liberté (feat. Benjo)
3:06

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One of the great WSOP traditions is fast becoming the Bluff/Sapphire party (3rd year?) … where hundreds of Amazon-entrenched pokerers — from pros to media to dealers — who have lived for more than a month in a pen mostly void of conjugal relief gather to collectively release steam before hunkering down for the main event … and what a perfect night when the other big party is the “elitist” Ante-Up for Africa afterparty. There’s something delightfully egalitarian about being entertained by 98-percent naked aspiring starlets making money while having a grand-ole beglittered time … personal degeneracies be damned.

AlCantHang fills in for yours truly to record the first ever Tao of Pokerati episode mid-lapdance — an “event” joined by DrizzTDJ and (briefly) Calfornia Jen. Change100 gives the (awesome) play-by-play. Plus Kathy Liebert … and is that Tom McEvoy?

Tao of Pokerati at the 40th WSOP
Las Vegas, NV

Episode 11.27: The Best Party of the Year (feat. AlCantHang)
1:27

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Episode 11.28: Grindcore Poker (feat. Change100)
2:51

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(Interlude …)
0:05

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The last week at the 2009 WSOP has seen some impressive performances from the European poker contingent. Europeans love to head over to ‘Sin City’ when the World Series of Poker is running and this year they’ve enjoyed great success with cashes and bracelets galore to be celebrated. When it comes to WSOP bracelets, what happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas!

Finland’s Mika Paasonen fell at the final hurdle in the $2,000 No Limit Hold’em event. Paasonen, who made a name for himself online before switching to the live arena, couldn’t overcome Angel Guillen, from Mexico City, in a tense heads-up encounter. Paasonen joins fellow Finn and possibly one of the players of the WSOP so far, Ville Walhbeck, in the top 10 European money winners for 2009 to date. Wahlbeck’s deep cashes and bracelet success sees the man from Helsinki sitting pretty on $849,793 in winnings so far. Paasonen is a respectable 8th on $333,593 following his three cash results.

Fabrice Soulier from France has continued his superb WSOP run of form. Following the $5,000 Pot Limit Omaha event, where the Frenchman finished in 21st for $14,433, Soullier led the number of cashes leaderboard with an impressive six. However, he has only made one final from his six cashes and, at the moment, his consistency seems to lack the killer instinct needed to win a bracelet.

More…

Another poppy video where PokerStars got some noticeable product placement was in Katy Perry’s “Waking Up in Vegas”. Check it out (along with an appearance by Daniel Negreanu) at about 1:15:

Apparently the original 2008-09 girl-kissing girl didn’t want to let Lady Gaga get all the poker player goo-goo … hence this video.

[via Wicked Chops]

Cherryl in Las Vegas — whose job it is to keep Las Vegas scenesters posted about what celebs are hanging where, with whom, and how — writes in with word of a couple poker players out on the town:

Phillip Ivey and Daniel Negreanu at Playboy Club

Greetings,

Professional poker players Phillip Ivey and Daniel Negreanu were at Playboy Club inside Palms Casino Resort Wednesday night ( 5.13.09). Dressed casually in jeans and t-shirts, they played blackjack for a short time and were seen drinking beer and FIJI Water.

Thanks,

Awesome … so now we know: Phillip and Fiji water.

ALT HED: Ivey, Negreanu Dating?

Your WSOP Experience is hardly complete without a drink or seven at the notorious Rio hooker bar … and while I skipped out early on post-coronation festivities, Pauly stuck around to yuk it up with Otis and Howard (from PokerStarsBlog.com, and England). Frightening observations of obese depravity lead to existential musings on the pathetic existence of all who domicile in Vegas (umm …) and while the trio don’t talk with Peter Eastgate as he walks through the Rio casino eerily alone for a guy who just won $9 million, they do interview one of the working girls … and before you know it they’re negotiating a deal to shoot a tag-team porno, all of which eventually deteriorates into threats of a lawsuit.

Hey, that’s just how things float early after sunrise on a Wednesday morning at the Rio.

Book 5: Tao of Hooker Bar

Episode 5.1: Boundless Nature, Las Vegas
6:05

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Episode 5.2: Hurricane of Hookers
7:25

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Episode 5.3: Cage-Savvy Coochie
3:05

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Pure conspiracy theory … inspired by the winner’s pic of “Harold and” Vivek Rajkumar proudly displaying his WSOP WPT bracelet at the Borgata. Without even a rumor to base this on (just circumstantial observations and wild speculation) I called Pauly hoping we could start one. Pauly was in London after covering the entirety of the last WPT event in Atlantic City, and had a brief stop-over in Amsterdam, which I figured put him in the exact right frame of mind to feel the rhymes I was droppin’ … and sure enough, by the time our jam was done we’d have Full Tilt moving in on PokerStars’ brick-and-mortar territory by bailing out Steve Lipscomb & Friends in an effort to challenge the EPT.

So you heard it here first … be sure to spread the word:

Tao of Pokerati: Episode 2.1
WPT Bailout Rumors (7:28)

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Ahh, remember the good-ole-days when there were only like three stories at a time coming in on the Google News Alerts for “poker”, and only like three bloggers who had signed up for them? Me neither … it was never quite like that (but close) … and though I make no promises to keep this up on a daily basis, in an effort to inform the poker-news-hungry to the best of my abilities keep my open browser tabs to a minimum and my email backlog < 500, I will try to provide you some basic links to the plausibly worthwhile shizznit shaking down:

CardRunners and StoxPoker have joined forces to create a poker-training supersite. [PokerOnAMac.com]

Original PartyGaming honcho Anurag Dikshit — creator of some of the earliest online poker software — is one of three Indians to make Forbes’ list of 34 web-innovator billionaires … as well he should be. [MSNBC]

More on the Fed’s aggressive pursuit of Bodog — including criminal investigations on the company and Calvin Ayre. [Forbes.com]

Barney Frank has re-introduced the Payments System Protection Act, a revised version of HR 5767, which was shot down in his own committee earlier this year. [PokerNewsDaily]

Las Vegas visitation is down — to its lowest point since the start of the Iraq war. [Las Vegas Advisor]

And thus it only makes sense that LV gaming revenue is down — 14 percent this time — for the 7th consecutive month. [Forbes.com]

You know those new poker rooms popping up in Arizona? Well the Pascua Yaqui tribe doesn’t like them and is trying to get them shut down. (Funny: the mayor of Phoenix is named Phil Gordon.) [Zonie Report]

Poker parties and poker school are all the rage in Croatia. [CroatianVillas.com]

FUN RUMORS: Apparently Johnny Depp is quite the poker player, but he’s having a hard time getting alt/indie band We Were Scientists to pay up the $28k he beat them out of. (But all debts have been settled with Orlando Bloom, whom he supposedly beat out of $800k during the filming of Pirates of the Caribbean.) [Online Casino Advisory]

And in hardly related non-poker news … Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter‘s pregnancy … do we want to start this century off in a world where teens (sometimes) use birth control and occasionally have an abortion or one where we preach abstinence and then glorify/celebrate the shotgun wedding? The MySpace page of the potential VPson-in-law Levi Johnston: [NYPost via HuffingtonPost via Kevin Allen/Sun Times]

“I’m a fuckin’ redneck” who likes to snowboard and ride dirt bikes.

“But I live to play hockey. I like to go camping and hang out with the boys, do some fishing, shoot some shit and just fuckin’ chillin’ I guess.”

“Ya fuck with me I’ll kick [your] ass,” he added.

He also claims to be “in a relationship,” but states, “I don’t want kids.”

Perhaps we all have something to learn from a billion (Non-American) Indians. Not only did “these people” give us one of the founders of PartyPoker and hundreds if not thousands of terrible customer service reps, but also they made what is arguably the best condom commercial ever:

 

It had already been a wild and fun night in a loose 3-6 Omaha Hi-Lo w/ full kill game at Binion’s and I was about to call it a night at 4 a.m. when this drunk Englishman stumbled to the table with a fist full of chips. I could tell right away this guy was going to be interesting, and likely to give away his stacks.

Unsurprisingly, he proceeded to give away some of his roll. After one guy took a nice pot, the Englishman said, “You American lump!” and started cackling.

“A lump? What’s a lump?” asked the guy incredously.

“What’s your name?” the Englishman asked.

“Dave. Who are you?”

“Peter. Peter the Great.”

At some point later someone used a slang term. I can’t recall it at the moment, but a riled up Peter the Great responded, “We gave you the English language and you desecrated it. You don’t speak the Queen’s English.”

Robert, a Binion’s regular, chimed in with, “Is that the English queen or a drag queen?”

Peter the Great pointed his finger at Robert. “You don’t insult the queen. That’s one thing you don’t do.”

“Is Prince Charles going to be the king or are they going to pass him over?” Robert asked.

To which Peter the Great quipped, “We should put a man of great intellect in the position…like George W. Bush, shall’nt we?” And then he cackled.

Later, after continued banter between the Americans and the Brit, Peter the Great remarked how England was the greatest country in the world and had given the world the greatest culture.

“Like the Titanic?” asked Dave.

Peter the Great cackled. “The Titanic was built in Ireland!”

“Wasn’t there a problem with the rivets?” Dave asked.

“They were probably American rivets,” Peter the Great replied.  

Dan seems to think that the story of an Alabama hillbilly chronicling his last attempt to win a mint and avoid going back to the 9 to 5 would be interesting so in addition to bringing you the interesting stories from the WSOP floor, I will be sharing my own adventures in Sin City during the last three weeks of the WSOP.

For a brief introduction, I am Johnny Kampis, better known in the poker blogger world as “Tuscaloosa” Johnny since I hail from the Crimson City. I wrote for Dan at PokerBlog back in the heady days of WSOP 2006. I worked for PokerWorks last summer and have been the main writer for Rounder Magazine for the last couple of years. I also have my own blog, PokerNation, where I share my personal rants and raves.

 I used to be a newspaper guy, working in that sort of journalism for six years. I left The Tuscaloosa News in the summer of 2005 hoping to sell a book on one year in the life on the tournament trail. I did some nice traveling that year, from Vegas to Foxwoods, Atlantic City to Reno, and met some interesting characters, but didn’t score a book deal. Now I feel like a guy with two dollars in his pocket and no plan on how to make it grow. I’ve managed to survive, but not really thrive, during the last three years. Dan knows, Donkey Bomber knows, and else reading this in a similar situation knows how much more enjoyable life can be without the 9 to 5 grind, but unless I can make the poker tables rain money in the next three weeks I’ll be on the job hunt when I return home.

I’ve spent my first few days in Vegas desperately trying to score a proper media pass so I can sit with Dan, Jen and the rest of the wonderful pokerati typing my reports. (There was supposed to have been one through Rounder, but there has been a snafu.) So now I sit here in the Fitzgerald’s Krispy Kreme feverishly trying to finish my first post while snacking on a lemon-filled doughnut. Damn sticky keys.

I’ve had no luck as of yet. I tried the $240 Omaha Hi-Lo at the Golden Nugget Grand series on Wednesday and played for 11 and a half hours only to not even make the moolah. I busted 21st of 162 and 18 got paid. I’m 0 for 4 in WSOP satellites. So far I’m singing the hillbilly blues.