If the WinStar poker room and Pokerati were Facebook friends, our relationship status would be “it’s complicated.” See, to some extent we have a lot of problems with WinStar — because their Chickasaw overlords have teamed up with both the Choctaw Nation and some old-school right-wing “anti-gambling” forces to put the kibosh on all our efforts to bring fully legal poker to Texas. But at the same time, they provide some of the best poker action and most comfortable environ currently available to North Texas players … in fact, I might say that if you exclude Las Vegas, WinStar is arguably one of the Top 10 poker rooms in the country.

I’m hearing that 4 of the top 100 players to cash in the 6,012-player $1k Stimulus Special were WinStar regulars. While those numbers don’t suggest any super-mad poker power — 4 percent of the top 1.7 percent — they do confirm that WinStar is indeed a WSOP force to contend with. Names forthcoming … and help me out if you happen to already know whom I should be looking for. (I’m admittedly a tad out of the WinStar loop since, you know, I kinda fight every two years to put them out of business.)