Things are getting rough over at ZyngaPoker, where I recently hero-called a bluff with 6th pair not because it was obvious but because I was curious and otherwise didn’t really care. LOL good times:
Beth’s Defense: You can have these pumps when you pry them from my cold dead hands.
Such is the ongoing case of Shak vs. Shak. The two got divorced three years ago, but now Dan is suing Beth alleging she didn’t tell the him or the court about a stash of shoes valued at about the equivalent of a One Drop buy-in. While some speculate that it’s a sign Dan has fallen on hard times, we can only guess that there’s far more subtext in play — with someone possibly calling someone else a slut and/or bitch. You know, he-said-she-said with money.
Though still a “poker pro” to the mainstream media, Beth currently runs a shoe blog and online shoe shop and has made appearances on the reality TV show, Millionaire Matchmaker.
Dan, meanwhile, is scheduled to play the WSOP One Drop tournament next week — and is in fact an “ambassador” for the $1 million buy-in, partially tax-deductible event.
I watched it … you probably will, too. Draw your own conclusions from a pre-launch YouTube timeline that starts with “Kangaroos and Emus” and “Get Out of the Friend Zone!!!” then goes to “Your Anus?” and “Closet”. One thing I couldn’t help but notice on this relatively brand-new DNegreanu YouTube channel is that there’s not a PokerStars logo anywhere near it.
Daniel Negreanu is keepin’ it real for his fans with a new V-log that talks about Jason Somerville’s coming out of the closet to him — yay, go gay poker pros! — and then sympathizes with poker players who might inflict testicle-centric violence on Howard Lederer, Ray Bitar, and Chris Ferguson.
Negreanu’s disdain for the Full Tilt empresarios is from the gut, you can tell, but gotta say … his calling for essentially the equivalent of a lifetime ban — hoping/encouraging-by-proxy all poker players to shun them forever — sounds ironically similar to KidPoker’s childlike rants against Clonie Gowen back in ’08, when he beckoned for a poker-worldwide ostracization of Clonie after she filed a multi-million-dollar lawsuit against … um … Howard Lederer, Ray Bitar, and Chris Ferguson (among others) … claiming they ripped her off and that Full Tilt Poker was a shadier operation than many might believe. LOL-oops? (Tune in next week!)
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:
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
If you just saw it on the street, you might not know it had anything to do with poker. But indeed, according to 2+2 NVG, this fine Nevada license plate is attached to nearly $100k worth of Beamer, a 650i, that Ben Lamb recently purchased:
Would be much cooler if the “1” represented a bracelet, and he got a new car for every one he won. But oh well, sometimes third place and $4 million will have to do.
ALT HED: Germans Win Again
Oh, and almost forgot to post … here’s Pauly and I on scene doing some Tao of Pokerati during the moment from the final 3 with him that we’ll all remember:
A little poker gossip because sometimes in serious times we like the petty …
Melanie Iglesias vs. WPT (and QuadJacks?)
The guys at Quadjacks have called it “Flushgate” — and reportedly have received quite a bit of wrath from non-poker types over “the abrupt resignation of three Royal Flush girls” — 2010 Maxim Hometown Hottie winner and now MTV personality Melanie Iglesias, Michelle Banzer, and brand spankin’ new RF girl Mica Javier, who had only been on the job for a few weeks. The purging all went down last month right around the time of press announcements for the World Poker Tour’s new Season X … ooh, juicy! You could almost be certain somebody was gonna cry, if not more formally cry foul.
Catpacking in AC
We can only imagine how cut-throat that world can be — where looks absolutely are tied in with your success. Call us old-school here at Pokerati, Melanie is great and all, but she’s still no Lacey Jones, who recently did a lingerie photoshoot with power-model Katerina Van Derham. Meanwhile, here’s a new video featuring Lacey and Maria Ho helping Christina Lindley pick out a dress for her birthday party at the Borgata in Atlantic City this weekend … and New Jersey celeb-hunter Michael Berman interviews this threesome, being dubbed “the Cat Pack” here for the kickoff of WPT Borgata, where there may or may not be openings for three new Royal Flush Girls.
Auction Player?
Speaking of old school, Phil Hellmuth appeared last week on the A&E show Storage Wars — advising a group about strategy in their game of swag auctions, which apparently involves a combination of luck and skill. Not too familiar with that show … when do we get to hear someone say to Phil, “Going, going, gone!?”
Dealer’s Choice: From Poker to Pot
A relatively unknown poker player named Jim Rice is representing poker (whether he likes it or not) and pot on Survivor 23: South Pacific. Supposedly a pal (and business partner?) of Paul Wasicka’s, the 35-year-old from Chicago is now a medical marijuana dispenser in Colorado (woot!). His most recent cashes include a 3rd and a 23rd on the Heartland Poker Tour, this year and in 2008, respectively. And now with online poker more illegal than selling weed (in some US jurisdictions) … makes you wonder if certain poker pros would rather be Jim Rice or Jean-Robert Bellande.
Jack Black Rising or Falling Poker Celebrity?
There’s always new Hollywood celebrities getting in on poker — and hosting a charity tourney is often their first foray into niche hero-status and/or business opportunity around their personal poker addictions. Could Jack Black be the latest? The last-place finisher in the WPT’s 2009 Hollywood home game is hosting a charity tourney next month at the Commerce Casino in California, but otherwise still has much to prove before he becomes the next James Woods, whom you may recall back in 2004-05 kicked off his effort to become the Adam West of Poker.
Vegas Living: Closing Down Blush
The luxe but laid-back “boutique” nightclub Blush, at the Wynn, is closing after a four-year run. Ahhh … I remember this “ultra lounge” as the site of multiple VIP poker parties and the place where upon moving to Vegas I met a guy who explained to me the process of importing women to the US for a life of hooker-dom before having to excuse himself to go sell coke. But perhaps more famously, Blush is the place where Antonio Esfandiari “lost” a game of who’s got bigger ballers to Kobe Bryant — with the NBA star supposedly racking up a $21,000 champagne bill that had celebrity and sports media mocking some poker player being called “the magician” … even though he somehow got Kobe to pay for the last 15 bottles of Cristal.
Meanwhile, @KobeBryant’s Twitter account got suspended last week, and @MagicAntonio’s, who had a surprisingly similar number of followers, did not.
Buy clever/corny poker T-shirts at Les Shoppes du Pokerati.
Carter Gill, 24, a top-ranked online poker pro, may be offline for a while, as he says he’ll be reluctantly turning himself in to authorities in Jefferson County, Oklahoma, to begin serving a 14-day jail sentence. The charges stem NOT from his arrest in September for public drunkenness at WinStar Casino, where he had to leave his chipstack behind in The River main event after being hauled away in a police cruiser (but still took 90th place in absentia, winning $4,540). Instead, he’s answering to the courts for various other unrelated crimes, including a DUI.
Gill is known for his unashamed belligerence, politically incorrect rants, and a “FUCKITALL†attitude. I totally dig this guy, partly because he’s virtually a male copy of myself (so I “get himâ€) and partly because I respect his game. But a recent Facebook status update shed some new light on his true vagina character: “I really don’t want to go to jail… 14 days is going to be brutal,†he whimpered.
Shortly after publishing that comment, Gill’s ballsack threatened to tear itself off and run away in shame. I was really disappointed to see the him panicking over two short weeks behind bars. Let’s put this in perspective…getting fisted by Edward Scissorhands is brutal.  A coathanger abortion is brutal. Two weeks in a hillbilly jailhouse isn’t so much brutal as it is inconvenient
Keep your chin up, Carter; I’m sure the two weeks behind bars will come and go as fast as your bankroll does.
Gah, another juicy newsbriefable thingy to speculate wildly on with little information or context when we all could just make a phone call or send an email to find out what’s up) … yet no Poker Beat to break it down. 🙁
Anyhow, check it out and decide with minimal information for yourself … Daniel Negreanu, “caught” on webcam via screencap … playing on a site that isn’t PokerStars?
It’s something new called PokerView — which looks like just about any other online poker site except instead of avatars you have webcam video. Very tell-revealing you might think in straight-up play. And Negreanu obviously isn’t making any effort to hide his identity any more than he’s actively trying to promote this new endeavor.
So many stories potentially in play here. Is Negreanu going the way of Hellmuth, Duke, Raymer, and Maven … seeking a new poker home? Does this new site have any connection to PokerStars (the biggest online poker company in the world, save for maybe Zynga)? Could this technology be a major step forward in TOS security, giving a real-time glimpse of who’s really playing and what else might be going on in their seat. Could you mix it with Rush Poker to create online poker’s version of chat roulette? And with that in mind, serious question … how long before people start showing their junk and contend it’s merely a strategic maneuver if your schlong got the other guy to fold?
ALT HED: Show Me Your Nuts
(Thanks, DL, for the tip!) (Shame on you, DL, for trying to play me a chump!)
CONFIRMED: Not a real Daniel Negreanu endeavor.
I’m back in action because I thought I was going to be up this morning spending my Pokerati paycheck on an Eskimo Clark bracelet — there’s one for sale on Ebay right now, in an auction that closes in about an hour. But holy meltdown, they’re up to 15 bids already, from six different bidders, and $4,050! That’s already more than TJ Cloutier got for his pawned-off WSOP hardware nearly a year ago, and puts Eskimo’s jewels way out of my league unless someone wants to give me a raise by infinity. Can you say, “Going once, going twice … going in your pants at the table?â€
The auction closes today at 10 am PT.Get in before this “pre-owned†1999 $1,500 Razz beauty is gone. (Replace the word Razz with “Dodge Neon” and that’s what my last boyfriend used to say to initiate foreplay.)
I knew I had no chance of scoring Peter Eastgate’s bracelet on eBay last week. His newer model fetched a whopping $147,500 after Interpoker got into a bidding war with Tony G, who made a play for the limelight by blog-bragging about plans to buy it for a collar for his dog. Inter stepped in to thwart him from making a “mockery†of the WSOP, but I’m not sure which is worse – seeing a WSOP bracelet on a dog or seeing it on eBay. But with the prize going to anonymous bidder “7***l”, it did raise a lot of money for UNICEF.
And check it out, Eastgate’s not done hawking his WSOP main event booty yet. Little Petey’s now got his “2008 WSOP Final Table Corum timepiece†for sale. The seller is “petereastgate†himself, making his first ever eBay posting. Asking price: $7,000. Money from that auction will go to UNICEF, too, but so far it has 0 bidders and closes on Friday.
Maybe I’ll use what I thought I’d spend on Eskimo to buy a couple Peter Eastgate 8x10s.
Some may recognize me from Twitter, a few may have cracked my aces a time or two, and it’s possible that some of you were smart enough to jot down that number I left on the bathroom wall. If you don’t recognize me AT ALL, then you’re part of an exclusive group called “Almost Everyoneâ€.
My name is Kim Shannon, and I’m all up in everyone’s bidness… which is why Pokerati invited me to share with you the poker gossip and celebrity “newsâ€. My initial response was “I’d rather drink a thumbtack-and-jalapeno smoothieâ€, but then Dan reminded me that I still owe him a beej from a prop bet I lost… so here I am.
Let’s skip the gristle and get right to the bone, shall we, with what’s buzzing in poker … or wait, is that coming from my purse?
Word from the felt is that Daniel Negreanu and Andrew Robl have kissed and made up in the wake of a spat over last week’s episode of “The Big Game”, in which Negreanu & Tony G were poster children for fucked up poker etiquette. Poker bitching about implied collusion aside, I hadn’t seen so much high-fiving and snickering since I last got “Eiffel Towered†in a drunken MFM.
After the broadcast, Tony G redeemed himself by posting a quasi-apology, but Daniel kept the drama going with a post of his own expounding on Robl’s nittiness. I was in the middle of reading Robl’s rebuttal when I realized that I had been punching myself in the face the whole time over the pettiness of it all. However, I do feel the need to give Daniel a special award for managing to refrain from calling Robl a “cuntâ€.  Then, just as I was about to start placing bets on who would blow a gasket and sprain their vagina first, Negreanu ruined my fun by saying he has since called Robl and smoothed things over.
Alex Rodriguez was in the Ivey Room at Aria with Jean-Robert Bellande last week — supposedly playing 50-100 NL with a couple non-pro Aria regulars. Tweeting from Haze Nightclub, @BrokeLivingJRB reported that A-Rod “won 3k” in the game, which sounds to me more like 5-10 without steroids — hardly enough for new pair of Yankee-caliber starter tits. Dealers say A-Rod tipped adequately, btw, tossing “like $36 in gravel†before leaving the game. Not one to hit-and-run, he was back at the tables a couple days later, playing 10-20 NL at Bellagio. John Kim snapped a pic. Orel Hersheiser (great first name, terrible last) also joined the action somewhere along the way.
