RE: HammerWear

LAS VEGAS–There’s a sale at the Rio! That’s right, get your non-freebie swag! Last year so many T-shirts were being given away, I’m sure it was hard for the official joint to hawk its merch. This year no one’s here to give away the goods gratis … so apparel is being sold on the corner (like literally — prime location at the Amazon room crossroads) for $25 a pop. Or shall we say $17.50 a pop?

A few featured selections:

Wow. Kinda hard to believe that these shirts have the officially licensed WSOP logo, no? Oooh, Dead Man’s Hand! Pizz-izz-zashhaw! Don’t Hate the Playa, Foo! Booh-yah! Perhaps the worst shirt for sale — one commemorating Phil Hellmuth’s historic 2007 WSOP victory:

click to enlarge

These shirts have been on sale for about two weeks now … guess how many they have sold.

OK, I’ll tell you how many … 1.

No, it wasn’t to Phil Hellmuth … it was to a guy who the graveyard-shift saleslady thinks was a collector of some sort, as he purchased one of almost everything. Either that or to someone who wanted to give it away as a Gigli prize to the first person out of a tournament.

This one’s cool-ish, no? Have not seen anyone wearing one, however.

But now check out this official WSOP shirt … closely.

Is it just me or does the above look a lot like a combination of a few things below:

There’s a fine line between inspiration and copyright infringement, I suppose. But then again, if the essence of the WSOP isn’t the roughly elegant convergence of Pokerati and the WPA … with a little Batfaces thrown in to boot … then really, what is it?