This — a live cam from above the floor of the Commerce — is pretty cool. Would be extra-awesome if a fight were to breakout or some girl decided to go streaking. But whatever, anyhow, check it out, if you want to watch — at present — three or four tables of a super-satellite at the Commerce. (They just got back from break.)

I think the plan is to stream the final table of the $1k w rebuys event later tonight …

They don’t quite have play-by-play to make it a real show (yet), but there is a chat moderator to answer questions about what you’re looking at. This UStream thing … so much potential to be either really good or really bad. Jury still out … but interesting they have it … and the audio now in my background (have heard a few screams and stomps, calls for somebody named Sam, and lots of chip-clicking) is more compelling than the NBC analysts for pairs figure skating.

Webcam chat at Ustream

I don’t quite get what’s possible when they say, “You can send video here by putting the show’s hashtag, #veerob, in the title when you record! Enjoy!” Are they implying someone at the table could run video, too, and put it in the same thread?

I can see World Series coverage really changing in coming years if people can self-cover themselves on video similarly to reporting their chip counts via twitter.

Follow the goings-on at the Commerce a little less pathetically with @LAPokerClassic.

Beyond Johnny Weir’s loving him some Lady Gaga, the following Olympic athletes on Team USA like to play poker at charity fundraiser events and/or recreational home games while on the road doing the practice-travel-competition grind:

Ben Agosto (Ice Dancing)
on twitter
TanithandBen.com

Evan Lysacek (Figure Skating)
on twitter
EvanLysacek.com

JR Celski (Speed Skating)
on twitter
JRCelski.com

Hannah Teter, the Annette15 of Snowboarding?

Hannah Teter (Snowboarding)
in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue

Nate Holland (Snowboarding)
on twitter

Shaun White isn’t known as much of a poker player, but here’s a picture of him at the poker table.

For more information on these athletes, including photos, videos and the full schedule for the 2010 Olympic Games, visit www.NBCOlympics.com or www.TeamUSA.org.

@AllenKessler loves a good blind structure, and may or may not love to bitch about those in successful tourneys he’s not even playing in. Regardless, he’s answered @SavagePoker’s call to reassess the popular deep-stacks format by trying to start a twitter flame war on behalf of … well, that much we’re not so sure about, but we haven’t seen such a fun Battle of the Tweets since @EskimoClark vs. @BigRussPoker (whose account has apparently been suspended?).

We may or may not get around to taking a closer look at the finer nuances of currently popular blind structs, but in the meantime we wanna know, unscientifically, of course, from a tournament blinds perspective, where you think the best place is to play. Daily voting to your right.

Oh, and then just for fun, be sure to check out the delightfully mock-a-vellian @ComplainSaw.

From the Twitter of Washington Post reporter blog-shadowing Darvin Moon (@jfdulac) comes a story from the Baltimore City Paper, detailing Darvin’s numerous past transgressions over the past few years. It includes him pleading guilty and receiving probation for forgery and theft, along with three counts of passing bad checks. Court records also show Moon posting bail for others on two occasions, in 2002 for a man who plead guilty to drug dealing and is serving a 10-year sentence, and once for an apparent relative on assault charges.

From the BCP’s look at his financial and legal past:

But it is Moon’s record of civil judgments against him that may come into play in the future, given the kitties he’s been winning in Vegas. Court records show liens filed against Moon for nearly $20,000 owed to City National Bank of West Virginia, a little over $1,000 owed to Miners and Merchants Bank, nearly $13,000 owed to Pasadena Receivables, and about $1,000 owned to Southern Auto Supply in Moon’s own community of Mountain Lake Park, near Oakland in Western Maryland.

His creditors, no doubt, will be much obliged to share in his recent winnings.

Almost forgot to tell you … if you hadn’t noticed already, we’ve got a poll up (to the right, and down a bit) wondering: Who’s the Best Twitterer in Poker?

You should vote. As many times as possible. It’s a tight race. A lot on the line. Criteria completely random and subjective … though I do hope you all realize there’s a big difference between tweets from @Erik_Seidel and @DonkeyBomber, half a dozen bracelets notwithstanding.

@AllenKessler got a little peeved at @Pokerati last week for “spoiling” The Amazing Race. Whatever … This week, @Alexpokerguy blew it for me — I had completely forgotten about the show, or at least that it was Sunday. Asshole. Bummer, but hey, such is life when anyone has the ability to condense an hour-long TV show into 140 characters or less.

In case you did miss the show, you can catch episode 5 in its entirety here.

All we’ll tell you about it is that the Racers travel to Dubai, where eight teams are reduced to seven. Semi-spoiled: Tiffany being Tiffany + Maria driving => karmically fitting results.

And for something a little extra, here’s @TiffnyMichelle discovering that not all Arabs are terrorists:

While poker seems to like what tweeting from the field of play brings to the table, tennis people — specifically the Tennis Integrity Unit (wow) — do not want to see anything on twitter saying, “returning serve. whoa! that was close!” because of fears the communications will be misappropriated by gamblers.

From the New York Times:

The signs, written by the Tennis Integrity Unit, point out that Twitter messages could violate the sport’s corruption rules. Tennis appears to be the first sport openly concerned about Twitter’s possible effect on gambling.

The signs say tweeting is not allowed on court during matches. They also warn about using Twitter away from the court, saying sending “certain sensitive information” could be considered passing along inside information.

Speaking of bankroll management … an @Ali_Nejad tweet reminds me of the power of network television, and provides a glimpse of what serving as tournament director on the lowest-rated show on prime-time TV can get you:

@Ali_Nejad At BMW dealer finally gettin break-in service on M5. Sure it only gets 10mpg, but I only drove it 900mi in 3 months! “Green?” What say u?

No blood for oil, dude. Props for going green to show your support for Iran!

Wow, so much big action going on today. I really can’t think of a comprehensive way to follow it without tuning in to a lively collection of poker-player twitter feeds.

Obviously it’s Day 6 of the WSOP main event … and we’re all starting to wonder just how deep @DonkeyBomber and several others (Peter Eastgate, Dennis Phillips, Joe Sebok, Phil Ivey, Elky, David Benyamine) can go. Click here to follow the live updates on WSOP.com.

NOTE: Tom is playing at the ESPN featured table with Prahlad Friedman. I told him he didn’t have to wear his patch until Day 7. Oops? What I didn’t take into account (via Pauly):

Another huge table? Jordan Morgan drew Phil Ivey and David Benyamine’s table. All are top pros but very quiet players who rarely speak at the tables. I guess that’s why they’re not on the featured TV table.

And then down the hall in the Brasilia room, @taopauly and I are looking to take down the WSOP Dream Team Poker team title and then some.

Today is also the start of the Venetian Deep Stacks main event — a $5k that looks to have lots of WSOP main event bustouts in the field. And Team Pokerati will have its representative in @Tbonezz111. It’s the biggest event Troy’s ever played in; he got in on a $130 satellite to a mega-satellite … so should be fun to see if he can make a run for the bubble and then some.

Lastly, the $15k Bellagio Cup V main event starts today. Should be interesting to see who plays (and who doesn’t, opting instead for the Venetian action). You can follow those updates at WorldPokerTour.com.

Wheee! Great way to start the week … and bring the big poker summer to a close.

Traction the commenter wonders:

Isn’t pat poels part of team pokerati? Show the love and get a chipcount

Fcuk-yeah, he is. (Especially when he’s got chips!) Not only does PP represent us well, but also Poels has provided a good subplot to the 2009 (Tom) Schneider collapse (and possible main event redemption). He’s faced a similar struggle this year, though he didn’t sink quite as deep hole-wise and has booked a few small cashes to yield thusfar better results climbing out of it.

Though his starting chip stack wasn’t too much bigger than Tom or Randy’s, Poels — a Day 2b guy — began the day at a table quite different from @TBR’s and DonkeyBomber’s:

1. Sykes, Mark 43,800
2. Poels, Pat 139,400
3. Feduniak, Bob 72,700
4. Beddaoui, Younan 25,800
5. Sliwinski, Nicholas 68,400
6. Gurevich, Max 61,700
7. Zeitlin, David 53,400
8. Tomko, Derek 19,000
9. Wilton, Ben 51,300

Honestly, I don’t think he could ask for anything better than Amazon-O72. Phil Ivey’s actually in a similar situation, only slightly more dominatingly, next door at O73. We’ll try to find out what happened, and for more immediate updates (not yet, but later), check in with @pokerati.

UPDATE: Pat has been moved. For now we’ll just assume/hope he ran over it, and that’s why it broke. For rapid-fire updates from around the Rio, follow the official action here. And for the best semi-live sense of what’s really happening on the tables as a whole, here. And of course here.

I’m not saying this is an example of favoritism … though as a former tourney director, I absolutely used to do favors for regulars and VIPs, and saw it as an important part of customer service … for all the greatness of twitter, it sure must make it difficult to “control the message” at times, or at least prevent plausible misinterpretations of it.

Joe Reitman’s time-logged WSOP main event Day 1d activities (as of 4:30ish):

Lots of action and loose play. 3 Europeans at my table…
39 minutes ago from Twittelator

Just got seated for main event.complete insanity today…..
about 1 hour ago from Twittelator

Signing up for the WSOP main event in the AM…..heeeeeeere we go……
about 16 hours ago from web

Looks like I might being playing the main event of the WSOP on Monday…..oooh…..it is getting exciting
1:02 AM Jul 5th from web

via @melissalvla and @change100

Recapping the still ongoing action from Tuesday night:

$50k HORSE Final Table, It Keeps Going, and Going, and Going…

It’s 9:15am PT, but the final table of the $50,000 HORSE is still going with David Bach and John Hanson playing heads-up with Bach holding a slim chip lead. Erik Sagstrom finished in 3rd, Vitaly Lunkin was eliminated in 4th, Huck Seed finished in 5th and Ville Wahlbeck finished in 6th place. Unless Wahlbeck makes a deep run in the Main Event, Jeff Lisandro appears to have locked up the WSOP Player of the Year with Wahlbeck a close second. For those of you who have followed the nearly 17-hour final table from beginning to end, God bless you.

“Whackjob Surprise” Goes Deep in $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw

Nine players remain in the $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball when play resumes at 2pm. Here’s how the remaining players will be seated:

Seat 1: Hertzel Zalewski – 111000
Seat 2: Nam Le – 95000
Seat 3: Masayoshi Tanaka – 345000
Seat 5: Brad Libson – 146000

Seat 1: Kris Lord – 87000
Seat 2: Julie Schneider – 163000
Seat 3: John Juanda – 182000
Seat 4: Blair Rodman – 358000
Seat 6: Abe Mosseri – 447000

The reason for the title of this section is that it was a comment made regarding Julie Schneider by Daniel Negreanu on his Twitter. He would later add the following upon finding out she read his Twitter: “Apparently the lady reads my twitter. Oops lol. Oh well, when I sat down I swore she was a little off or slow. My bad!”. Negreanu eventually finished in 16th.

Halpern Lawyers Up in Stud 8

New Orleans attorney David Halpern defeated William Kohler heads-up to take down the $1,500 Stud Hi/Lo 8 or Better picking up his first WSOP bracelet along with $159,048.

Piesert Gets Bracelet for Dessert

The country of Germany gets its second WSOP bracelet winner with Jorg Piesert taking down the $3,000 Triple Chance NL Holdem title along with $506,800, defeating Jason DeWitt in heads-up play. After going 50 events without a win, Germany wins on consecutive days, following Carsten Joh’s win in the $1,500 NL event Monday night.

Final Day of Final $1,500 NL

Sergey Konkin, who may also be Sergey Pomerantsev as Konkin’s name didn’t appear on the Day 1 chip counts, is the chip leader (1,400,000) with 28 players remaining in the $1,500 NL Holdem Spectacular when play resumes at 1pm. The most notable name of the remaining 28 is Vivek Rajkumar at just 216,000.

$5,000 NL 6-max

Day 2 of the $5,000 NL Holdem 6-max event begins at 2pm with 160 players remaining, with 90 players making the money. Rory Mathews leads with 369,800 in chips. Others with chips: Faraz Jaka (294,500) , Davidi Kitai (166,300), Justin Bonomo (138,600), Raymond Davis (131,400), Shaun Deeb (114,800), Yevgeniy Timoshenko (107,100), Phil Hellmuth (101,200) and Kenna James (85,500).

More stuff from Pokerati during the day, and follow the live updates this morning for the HORSE event, as long as it’s still ongoing at www.wsop.com

$50k HORSE starts late with a smaller field than hoped for, but the final “Donkaments” are selling out — leaving some players, known and unknown, shut out. Is it all a twitter-based conspiracy spearheaded by Harrah’s? (And if so, who’s on the inside?)

presented by:

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

Episode 11.26: DonkTwit Conspiracy
4:54

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

An unsettling tournament rules situation … just in from one of our undercover Pokeratizen investigators playing in the $1,500 NLH … and, of course, it involves texting.

This took place at a table in the Miranda Room, shortly after the first break … a player was re-raised all-in, and he supposedly went into the tank for a good two minutes. During that time, the player with his tournament life on the line reportedly stood up from the table and sent a text. A few seconds after getting a reply, he folded.

Though no one called the floor during the questionable texting, the table did bring it up after the hand, and the dealer apparently said that no, they are not supposed to issue any sort of reprimands for texting-related issues. The assumption around the table was that this dealer simply was a bit clueless … but then when a new dealer came in, the players brought up the same hand and issue, and the new dealer concurred, that yes, they are not supposed to stop any such activity.

I think we all know that this shoulda been a dead hand — sorry dude, your tourney’s over — but with the new dealer echoing the same thing, perhaps there was something misconveyed to the dealers about non-enforcement of original texting rules at the table, exception to the exception obviously being when a player’s in a hand?

We’ll see if we can’t find out more. Obviously you’d hate to boot a player on a rule violation or technicality in a $1,500 Donkament Super-Amazing Intraductory Pokerthon (we’re still workshopping a new name) … but at the same time, to avoid that, you’d think the dealers would need the authority to pipe up and say, “hey you, Mr. Amateur who doesn’t follow these sorts of things on Pokerati, stop that or your hand will be dead!”

A great article appeared in the New York Times yesterday about poker’s relationship with Twitter at the WSOP. Complete with a Joe Sebok interview, the piece examines the impact of Twitter on poker players and reporters.

As a growing number of poker players are beginning to send out short messages to the world via Twitter, existing poker media is being disrupted and the news sites are scrambling to out-compete with each other in responding to the players’ direct and immediate communication with their fans. Players are reading each others’ Tweets, too, and that has consequences.

We talked about all this disruption with Joe Sebok, a poker player, the CEO of the Poker Road news site and a man with almost 330,000 people following him on Twitter. All the major poker news sites are racing to integrate Twitter and Sebok says his site isn’t one of the biggest – but as far as we can tell, Poker Road’s use of Twitter during the World Series of Poker may be defining the state of the art better than anyone else in the industry.

Nice job, Seebs! PokerRoad Nation deserves credit where it’s due. (And in our own shameless plug, Pokerati has its own Twitterverse. It’s no “nation,” just a universe-type thing – LOL.)

Well, either Tom is suddenly running good or he stopped playing like a dooshwad or he’s less worried about twitter or he’s simply playing with sheer determination for fear of losing his captain status on Team Pokerati … regardless, they’re down to 52 players in the $10k 7CS-HL, and he’s currently 5th in chips. 16 get paid.

Apparently @donkeybomber was down to fewer than 3k chips at one point (they started with 30k) but has since climbed out of the cellar.

Click here to follow along. Because I sure ain’t gonna go anywhere near him. Still a long way to go.

UPDATE: Tom Down (not to be confused with Tom Dwan) and out.

The other two-bracelet holder on our squad, Pat Poels, made the money in $3,000 HORSE.

We’d say follow his progress here, but they’re not really covering him much — with 46 out of 452 players remaining, many of them plenty big names. (Which is kinda why he’s on Team Pokerati.) At the same time he’s not twittering nor Facebooking his play … so that may become an issue at contract renegotiation time.

As of the current break, he’s got a slightly below average stack.

Two players won a WSOP bracelet earlier this morning, but the vast majority of the discussion will be on Phil Ivey, who took down his 6th WSOP bracelet in Event #8 $2,500 NL 2-7 Draw Lowball. While he collected under $100,000 from this event, he surely picked up a few million in bracelet bets with his fellow poker players, recouping some of those millions he had lost last year when he made similar bracelet bet wagers. John Monnette was looking for his first WSOP title, and he did not go down quietly, as the pair were heads-up for over 3 hours. Both had each other on the ropes, but Monnette was able to double up twice to take a huge chip advantage, but Ivey battled back like he had a few million dollars riding on the result. Several pros were on the rail watching the action, more than a few hoping that the professional from San Diego, California would knock off Ivey. Unfortunately for them, Phil would double up himself to retake the chip lead, finally eliminating Monnette when his 7-6 low crushed them pocket 7’s of Monnette. You can follow all the action as it transpired last night over at Pokernews, where I also wrote the recap that will appear later this morning.

Joining Phil Ivey at the bracelet ceremony today will be Travis Johnson who took down the $1,500 NL Holdem event a few hours ago taking over $666,000 in what appears to be his first tournament cash. Might as well make your first cash include a WSOP bracelet.

Two events that weren’t able to make their final table by the 3am deadline will both return at 1pm today to play down to a champion. The scheduled event for streaming on the Bluff Magazine website is the $1,500 NL Holdem 6-max event, which is down to their final 8, who’ll be seated as listed:

Table 154:
Seat 1: Carman Cavella 1,059,000
Seat 3: Charles Furey 1,169,000
Seat 4: Bryce Yockey 1,489,000
Seat 6: Bryn Kenney 656,000

Table 155:
Seat 2: Manny Minaya 339,000
Seat 3: Praz Bansi 630,000
Seat 5: Ken Aldridge 411,000
Seat 6: Peter Gould 780,000

Page 2 for more tournament activities today:
More…

We knew it was only a matter of time, right? TJ Cloutier reportedly had quite the emphatic conversation with Jeffrey Pollack while the two were watching Phil Ivey’s final table — about a recurring rule violation that may or may not be getting out of control. The issue: Twittering at the table.

TJ’s beef (as told to me secondhand) was that even when players are not in a hand, they are violating tournament rules when they are texting under the table, in their laps.

Here’s the rule in question:

87. Cell Phone Rule: All cell phones and other voice-enabled and “ringing” electronic devices must be silenced during Tournament play. A player who wants to use a cell phone to talk, text, or email must step away from their assigned table or be subject to penalty. Any player using a cellular phone while in a hand with no action pending (player has gone all-in) will receive a missed hand penalty to be assessed on the next hand. No cell phones or other electronic communication device can be placed on a poker table.

Hmm, I dunno. I think it’s subject to interpretation — and frankly, imho, these are the problems with rules written (or approved) by lawyers, as opposed to writer-players. But what really surprises me in the above-described situation is that @JeffreyPollack didn’t twitter about it.

Just remember, whether you’re breaking a rule or not, you can follow all the peeps we’re following in the Pokerati Twitterverse here.

From the Twitter of WSOPlive, who will be streaming over 20 final tables of this year’s WSOP:

The final table of event #4 ($1,000 NL Holdem is taking much longer to reach than anticipated, the powers that be have asked us to cancel today’s broadcast.

we’ll be broadcasting tomorrow at 2pm Vegas time no matter what, the players who final table event #4 will have the option to return then

Should they decline, we’ll show the final table of the $1500 Pot Limit Omaha event. This also means we’ll be adding a bonus event soon.

So no need to stay up tonight to wait for a final table, if the players decide to end early. That causes a final table logjam as there’s the possibility of three final tables running tomorrow afternoon as the $10,000 7-Card Stud World Championship will also play to a conclusion on Wednesday. Stay tuned to Pokerati and www.worldseriesofpoker.com for further updates.

We apparently badge ‘em up good … they’re playing hand-for-hand, just a few spots away from the money in the $1,000 Stimulus NLH, and yet another Pokerati preferred player is properly representin’. Cliff Fisher, aka @brdpoker, is an IT specialist from Dallas playing in his first ever WSOP bracelet event. He ended Day 1 last night by more than doubling up when he called a reasonable raise with pocket 2s, flopped a set, and got it all in to eliminate his opponent’s top-pair-top-kicker with AK.

That brought him to 39,300 chips (comfortably above average). Despite his personal efforts not to succumb to superstition, he credits his success to the Pokerati patch: “As soon as I put this thing on, I started running like ultimate Goodness,” Cliff said.

Though he did decide to change his shirt for Day 2, he did keep the patch on to start today, and sure enough, he’s up to 56,100 chips (avg. stack about 30,000) as they cross into the money.

Follow Cliff throughout the day on twitter.

CORRECTION: Cliff did not change his shirt.

Meanwhile, @shoegal5225 also began displaying her Pokerati patch in a way we’re plenty happy to see … and sure enough, upon doing so, she won her satellite:

The $1,000 NL Hold’em Stimulus Special looks to be a huge success, as day 1a appears to be sold out with at least 2,800 entered. There’s still some room for tomorrow’s day 1b, but it looks like that field will also be maxed out before play gets underway at 12 noon today. The WSOP Staff Guide projected 5,305 entrants and that has already been exceeded, so I’ll take the cheap win and take the over with a field of 5700 who will eventually play this weekend as the WSOP staff finds a few additional tables to put on the floor to accommodate the field.

The 40th Annual $40,000 NL Hold’em event returns for day 3 action today at 2pm with 23 players playing down to Sunday’s ESPN final table. Justin Bonomo will start action as the chip leader with 2,678,000 in chips, Ted Forrest in 2nd with 2,586,000, and David “WhoooKidd” Baker in 3rd with 2,367,000. Greg Raymer is the last remaining World Champion in the field, in 4th place with 2,287,000. Other notable names include Alec Torelli, Dani Stern, Matt Glantz, Isaac Haxton, David Chiu, Neil Channing, Andy Black, and Andrew Robl.

The $1,500 Omaha Eight or Better also comes back at 2pm today with 197 players remaining from their record field of 918. 2008 winner Thang Luu appears to have returned to his winning form, as he’ll start play today as the chip leader with 73,600 in chips. Other notable names remaining in the field include Phil Hellmuth, Annie Duke, Todd Brunson, and Brandon Cantu. Their final table is also scheduled for Sunday, although with much less exposure than what will be a mix of live and online stars of the 40k event or the WSOP Champions Invitational event, which also starts on Sunday. More to come today, with an update soon (?) if the Stimulus Special has sold out.

8am Update: Under 80 seats left for Sunday.
10:30am Update: 5,839 registered from Da Commish’s Twitter

Air Force One just landed at McCarren airport. The President is headed to Caesar’s Palace, for apparently what is a semi-controversial “junket” fundraiser for Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV). We can not, however, confirm the rumor that he is in town to give the WSOP Stimulus tourney a $1 trillion overlay, nor that he plans to satellite into a Venetian Deep Stacks event.

Poker players arriving in town for the WSOP (via delayed flights) are twittering about it.

@Ali_Nejad has a pic of the motorcade.

LOL: Evelyn Ng and Erica Schoenberg just got done with their bikini photo shoot (with Tiffany Michelle) for Knockout magazine, and they’re all pissy about being stuck in traffic on the Strip — presumably unaware of why things are extra-congested on a Tuesday afternoon.

UPDATE: @JeffreyPollack is off to meet @BarackObama right now. Pre-emptive conclusion: good for poker!

UPDATE: President now headed to the Caesar’s Palace poker room. (Seriously.) via @Andy_Bloch.

Be happy you’re not on Tom Schneider’s mass email list. If you were, you’d get far too much mal-informed conservative propaganda, stories easily disprovable via Snopes.com, and the occasional funny potty-humor vid. Anyhow, this year Pokerati’s favorite alumni-blogger-made-good is jumping on the Twitter bandwagon … you know, along with everyone else.

(In fact, check out our new little Twitter toy here at Pokerati … or shall I say @Pokerati? We’ll explain to you how it all works once we figure it out ourselves.)

Click below to see/make fun of the 2007 WSOP Player of the Year explaining to his friends and family how he, as an “early adopter” of Twitter will be able to infrequently update people he cares about in a way where he doesn’t have to really deal with them:

More…

The WSOP unofficially starts at 9am today as the Amazon Room at the Rio opens for registration, cash games and satellites before the tournaments begin Wednesday with Event #1, the $500 Casino Employees tournament. That’s as good a reason as any to do the preview for this year’s World Series of Poker, so here’s some things to look out for during the Series:

More…

Tee times, to be more specific …

I didn’t plan on it, but at the moment I’m following a Las Vegas golf match between @barrygreenstein and @RealKidPoker. Pathetic, I know … surely there’s something better to stare at on this here wall. But I’m semi-intrigued … first, by how they’re golfing and how they’re betting it; and 2 — think how funny these two guys must look twittering down the fairways. It’s extra funny on twitter, too, because Greenstein’s avatar is him in a Robin Hood costume.

Strange new world?

Negreanu says he’s playing the best 9 he has in months.

Thursday is Poker Beat day … and today we’ll be talking about the WSOP, beef jerky, Dream Team Poker, and Twittering poker.

(Follow @Pokerati here.)

Tune in live or get the podcast:

http://www.pokerroad.com/the_poker_beat/live/

I’m actually on the bench for today’s show to make room for Dennis Rodman. But if he doesn’t show, I gotta be ready to go.

Matt at PokerListings (or should we be saying @_Pokerlistings_?) directs us to a fun Twitter feed to follow: Jean Robert Bellande’s — aka @BrokeLivingJRB.

Tales of a, er, stability-challenged(?) degen burning his bankroll down to $200(!) … but not before boozin’ it up at Vegas nightclubs … all in 140 characters or less.

How can you not wanna follow that, especially during the WSOP?

Annie Duke vs. Joan Rivers tonight … (getting underway live … we West Coasters have to wait a bit). I’m still not sure whether or not they’ve already done their task … my guess is they have, so tonight, “live”, is the final boardroom. Either way, @TexDolly is having fun coming up with some “Boo Joan!” doozies:

Joan Rivers got trapped on an escalator. The power went out,
12:45 PM May 8th from web

Joan Rivers has a concussion. She was getting a drink and the toilet seat fell on her head.12:27 PM May 9th from web

Meanwhile, you can follow Annie (@RealAnnieDuke), and probably even better, her boyfriend (@JoeUgly), before-during-after tonight’s finale. Likewise for @JoanRivers___.

Others on-set or nearby:
@CelebApprentice (@MelRivers and @brandenroderick got the official tweeting gigs)
@Zappos
@tomgreenlive
@Andy_Bloch
@natalie_gulbis
@howardhlederer

From the PPA:

Hi all,

Texas Gov. Perry is blocking the vote on HB222 (the bill that legalized land-based poker in Texas).  Let’s all amp up the pressure!

Contact info:
Phone: (800) 252-9600
Twitter: @GovernorPerry

I believe we should hit with calls and Twitters.  This was effective at getting us heard in Minn., so let’s try it here.  I wrote up some Tweets to Twitter.  It takes just seconds to send these out, so let’s all pitch in!

Click here to send Tweet #1: RT @PPApoker: PLZ tell TX @GovernorPerry at (800) 252-9600 to stop blocking a vote on HB 222, a bill that allows poker in Texas. PLS RT!”

Click here to send Tweet #2: “RT @PPApoker: PLZ tell TX @GovernorPerry at (800) 252-9600 that poker is a game of skill that should be legal in Texas. PLS RT.”

Also, if Perry follows you on Twitter, you can send him a direct message:

Click here to send the direct message: “D GovernorPerry: Texas Hold’em is a game of skill that should be legal in Texas. Can you end your HB222 vote block? THX! http://is.gd/uNvv”

I posted this to P5s at http://www.pocketfives.com/poker-forums/7/new-letter-to-congress-please-send-4240404 and http://www.pocketfives.com/poker-forums/8/texas-poker-legalization-people-living-in-texas-plz-read-4204172 .  If you get a chance, please consider posting a message of encouragement there to get others to pitch in.  After all, 2+2 responded to this by giving me a warning; P5s responded by stickying my thread for the day (I didn’t ask them to).

Thanks!

Rich

Everybody and their dogma seems to be jumping on the Twitter bandwagon these days. Whether texting your whereabouts will prove to be fad or societal fabric a few years from now remains to be seen. In the meantime …

Doyle Brunson’s loving it as a way to share what’s going on in Bobby’s Room.
Annie Duke will let you eavesdrop on semi-private convos with her boyfriend and her catfight with Joan Rivers.
And now Jeffrey Pollack says Twitter is the way he’ll remain accessible to the people during his ever-hectic WSOP.

UPDATE: Interesting … Pollack is with Joan Rivers today in BH (Beverly Hills) … funny coincidence or evil WSOP ratings plot being hatched?

Right now you can follow the final table of the WPT Championship via Twitter, and the activities of their lead reporter, BJ, for a little unintentional real-life behind-the-scenes.

UPDATE: Bertrand ‘Elky’ Grospellier just locked up WPT Player of the Year.

Pauly’s a little bummed I think … because last year Twitter was his semi-secret cybernook where he could relay the real WSOP dirty for his loyalist, most technologically advanced fans … but now this space is anything but “under the radar”.

UPDATE: @Pauly openfaced jerkchicken sandwich w/ jack cheese & dijonaise mustard …

Pokerati’s on the Twitter train now, too. Still trying to figure it all out — but so far definitely not “good for my poker”.

Feel free to add any peeps in the comments that you think we might-should pay attention to; and/or weigh in on whether or not you think this internet-texting convergence thing is “good for poker” will stick around.

Doyle Brunson is on the grid, that’s for sure. In his latest blog post, which I read via Facebook, he tells us he’s really getting into Twitter. Here’s his address if you want to follow him: twitter.com/texdolly

In doing so, you’ll learn why he’s not playing in the WPT Championship, and that Phil Ivey lost $1 million in Bobby’s Room last night.

And then, back to his blog, he explains to all the Teabaggers out there why he thinks they should STFU!

I headed over to my CPA to get my taxes done and ran into a traffic jam. Hundreds of people were blocking the streets having what they called a “tea party”. I think they were protesting the current financial crisis our nation is going through, but some of the signs were ridiculous. “Impeach Obama”, “What comes after trillions”, “Stop spending our money” and other statements blaming our president. For Pete’s sake, let’s give the guy a chance to straighten this mess up. I got a lot of heat for voting for McCain, but I knew when I cast a late vote, John didn’t have a chance to win. I was just being loyal to the Republican Party. But now that the nation has spoken that they wanted Obama, we should all support him.

For those that like to follow the live updates at poker tournaments, it can be frustrating waiting for your favorite player’s status in a tournament. You could be someone who’s upset that some kid hired off Craig’’s List who can’t tell the difference between a straight and a flush messing up your bustout hand and making you look like stupid. The best way to combat this would be to be your own live updates reporter to get your side of the story out there. During last year’s WSOP, there was a site called FT Sweat was available for those who wanted to provide updates, but it was rarely utilized. Pokerati has it’s own CSR which works within the Pokerati community, whenever it gets updated. The hot application these days is Twitter, and the poker community is following the millions who’ve discovered Twitter.

Want to follow the shortened ramblings of an egomaniac, your favorite poker tournament reporter or blogger, or follow Pokerati (just don’t expect any updates).

Game of Skill ruling expected tomorrow … can we get another state to testify? All looks good for poker.

The PPA is there covering the proceedings via Twitter.

UPDATE: The ruling is now in, and the judge states there’s “overwhelming” evidence that poker is a game of skill. However, the five defendants were found guilty of running a gambling house.