Teddy Sheringham is one of the most successful soccer players of the last half a century. His professional career lasted twenty-four years, making him one of the game’s survivors. His quality as a player earned him an MBE, presented to him by Prince Charles for services to soccer on the 20th of November 2007.

He is also father to Charlie Sheringham, who has had a successful league and non-league career, and now plays for AFC Wimbledon as a striker. Teddy too played mainly as a second striker, first for Millwall between 1983 and 1991, before moving on to Tottenham Hotspur and then Manchester United – it was whilst playing for MU that he was named PFA Player of the Year in 20001.

He retired in 2007/08, at the age of 4, spending his time improving his poker game. He is now a frequent on the world poker scene, and has racked up over $300,000 in live tournament winnings, including two World Series of Poker (WSOP) cashes. He also has a final table finish at a leg of the European Poker Tour under his belt, which netted him a cool €93,000.

Two final table appearances in the Palm Beach Big Game and a final table finish at The Ritz Club mean that he is no rookie – he has been playing seriously for the last six years, but has been playing poker throughout his adult life.

He learned to play poker in dens, hotels and on coaches, and says that he really learned to play poker by losing money. He has a tendency, like a lot of new players, to go for big hands and pairs, to be flash and cool. Now he says “it’s more about trying to figure out what other people have got, using real skill, and whether they’re bluffing. You have to think ahead.”

Luckily, since bwin started up, you don’t need to lose money to learn to play poker well. For beginners, Texas hold’em is usually considered the best starting point, you can find all the details here: poker.bwin.be/nl/texas-holdem.

You can practice hands and enter freeroll tournaments with bwin without spending anything at all – and according to most pros out there, the new guys who learn online are the best players out there. Start with free tournaments, learn the ropes, and then build up to cash games with the free bwin poker school.

Not to be dismissive of all the good work poker can do, but in Las Vegas, charity tourneys can begin to seem a dime a dozen.

Just about all charity tournaments promise “celebrities”, but few deliver. In the world of big-time charity events that consistently do, you’ve got Ante Up for Africa, the big $5k buy-in event at the WSOP, and, maybe Jennifer Harman’s event for the ASPCA. But one of the best opportunities to play with celebs for a decent price (and a great cause) is at the “All In for CP” 3 charity event, which takes place today at the Venetian at 4 pm PT.

The tournament raises money for the One Step Closer Foundation, an enterprise started by Jacob Zalewski when he was in college. Though the ultimate goal is to find a cure for cerebral palsy, the immediate goal is to allow people with CP to live more normal lives. Many of you who have spent time at the Rio during the last few World Series’ have certainly seen Jacob riding around the halls on his scooter.

This event does not lack in star power, as celebrities have taken down this event in the last two years. First it was actor Mehki Phifer, then last year Simpson’s co-creator Sam Simon won and generously donated the entirety of his winnings. This year’s event will also feature appearances by Shannon Elizabeth, Jennifer Tilly, Montel Williams and WWE Diva Alicia Fox, amongst others, as well as dozens of poker pros including Barry Greenstein, Phil Laak, Dennis Phillips, and Antonio Esfandiari.

As was previously stated this tournament is happening TODAY at 4 PM. Information about the event can be found on Facebook here and on the All In For CP website here. If you’re in the area you should definitely consider heading down and anteing up for this worthy cause.

Vegas fave Annie LePage and her lapddog playing poker at the Jen Harman SPCA fundraiser. Bijou seems to like their hand or is just hoping for a walk in the big blind.

There was a big charity event Tuesday night at the Venetian … part of their Deep Stacks II series … Jennifer Harman’s Charity Poker Tournament benefitting the Nevada SPCA. This has become one of the bigger Springtime celeb draws in poker, and is always a memorable shindig because of the presence of cute animals. You shoulda seen the look on the dealer’s face when Bijou (pictured here) jumped up and scampered around the table. I think half the players nearby were all cued up with jokes of “reraise!” and “floor!” had the pup, um, pushed a potty stack across the betting line.

Anyhow, I don’t know the numbers yet …I think it was actually smaller than in previous years, with 140something entries 30 minutes before late registration closed. But it really was a lot of fun … and the NSPCA seemed thrilled about the money the event was still raising, not to mention the number of rescued pets being adopted.

Pokerati Red Carpet Video

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OK, maybe I’m stretching his definition a bit, but still … gotta like the message Factor viewers are getting when Bill O gives a big American thumbs-up to Eva Longoria for hosting her big charity poker tournament in San Antonio this evening:

This tournament, btw, part of the Second Annual Tony and Eva Parker Celebrity Casino Night, is now, I’m almost certain, the biggest charity event in Texas — one of a few, if not the only one, that raises hundreds of thousands of dollars at a pop.

Awesome, and good for the beneficiary, Eva’s Heroes.

The guy instrumental in making this event happen, btw: Phil Hellmuth

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Lady Gaga has a new tattoo. WTF — no spade, heart, club, or diamond?

Not exactly … but like Michael Phelps, she did get a special invite — as the pop singer will be playing a show at the Galaxy StarWorld Casino at the same time. Personally, I’m gettin’ a little tired of being bluffed by muffins, but that’s neither here nor there when you’ve got a chance to make a cameo appearance in Johnny Chan’s forthcoming Chinese-language “Poker King” movie, right?

From EarthTimes:

Dear Lady Gaga,

“I wanna hold them like they do in texas please, fold’em let em hit me raise it baby stay with me.” We certainly hope so and cannot believe the coincidence that you are playing live in Macau on Saturday 15th August while the Asian Poker Tour Macau Festival is in full swing at the Galaxy Starworld.

Your ‘Fame Ball’ Tour has been a huge hit and we are sure the plaudits in Macau will be the same as in Osaka, Tokyo, Seoul and Manila but imagine the reaction if you showed your poker face at the Asian Poker Tour Macau Festival! Not only will the venue be full of the world’s best poker players, the tournament is also the backdrop to the first ever Chinese language poker movie ‘Poker King,’ which people would go ‘gaga’ for if you took on a cameo role. Forget the wigs, keep the bleached blonde hair and think about the exposure to a huge audience!

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Had a brief little run-in with Ivan Neville (of the Neville Brothers, and now Dumpstaphunk), who’s a low-stakes poker regular at Harrah’s New Orleans, any casino town he plays music in, and online. Not only did he sing the National Anthem at the USO/PPA charity event last night, but also he’s gone to some meetings with Congresspeople representing Louisiana and Texas … and in at least one case, his presence helped poker win out on a double-booked sked. Oh, and in addition to inspiration for further political involvement, he got an education on how the rebuy period really changes tournament action.

Says Neville: “Poker’s a friggin’ American pastime!”

Neville Brother on Poker+Politics

Lou Diamond Phillips is the lone (non-poker) celebrity remaining in the main event, with a respectable 607,000 chips. (Avg. is 481k.) I’ve played with him once before … and it was a memorably odd night of poker, to say the least.

The recap of that eve has been lost in the old-old Pokerati archives, but I was able to dig up some pics from that eve:

(L to R) Lou D Phillips, Clonie, and The Big Randy in an intense hand of 50-cent-dollar no-limit hold’em at The Lodge.

LDP (as we called him before he became @LouDPhillips) was in town for the Deep Ellum Film Festival, so Robert Wilonsky invited him to a $.50/$1 Batface game at The Lodge. Clonie Gowen and Rick Fuller were there, as was David Williams I believe. Lou was actually running over the table … building his stack to about $700, which was very threatening in that game. Then Jerome Bettis showed up (out of nowhere and uninvited, btw) … The Bus was apparently at The Lodge on unrelated lap-lovin’ business, and couldn’t help but pull away when he heard there was a poker game going on in the champagne room.

Ahh, remember the good-ole-days of 2005, when poker was on its exponentially fast pop-cultural rise, and nights like these happened all the time?

But then things got kinda strange as Lou began playing shirtless and was flexing whenever he pushed all-in …

Bizarre, I know … but hey, it’s a small poker world.

This just in over the poker transom:

Nicole Sullivan’s Poker Skills Tested
HollywoodPoker Celebrity Player Nicole Sullivan Challenged to a Head’s Up Game by a German Fan

A german fan! I won’t waste your time with the rest of the press release, but it did make me lol while shaking my head, because I had no idea who Nicole Sullivan was … yet it does deserve more ink that Mike Sexton faux challenge to Paris Hilton that may or may not have something to do with charity … But in this case … Nicole Sullivan … we’re talking the girl who played Holly the dog walker on King of Queens.

Durrr challenge Durrr shmallenge!

UPDATE: OK, I have to give you a little more because it’s funny … and I think I kinda get it now:

A gracious Nicole had this to say about the bout, “HollywoodPoker is the fix that a poker-loving mother of two needs. I put the little ones to bed, pour a glass of wine and have a little fun. Low stakes, high entertainment!”

Nicole currently stars as Rita Clemens on Lifetime TV’s original sitcom Rita Rocks as an overworked wife and mother who forms a garage band in the middle of a full-blown identity crisis.

You can’t make this stuff up! Reminds me of the Chicken of the Sea ads on Celebrity Apprentice. And really, it’s hard to poo-poo any efforts to bring more wine-drinky moms into poker.

With a cold coming on, I juiced up on cold medicine and headed down to Commerce Casino last night for the pre-tournament WPT Invitational cocktail party. In more of a stuffy-headed fog now, I give you a few observations from the festivities:

photo: pokergossip

William Hung was the first “celebrity” I noticed, as he arrived as soon as the red carpet was ready for action. And the poor guy was the only one from the red carpet featured by Perez Hilton today, and not featured in a particularly good way.

Food was excellent as usual, with a random assortment of Asian and Greek set-ups, along with the yum-yum appetizers floating around the room on waiters’ trays.

No DJ in the outdoor area like last year’s event, but it actually made for a more conversation-friendly atmosphere on the patio.

Wicked Chops scored seats in the tournament. I spent way too much time trying to figure out how that happened.

photo: pokergossip

Reports of the demise of the Phil Laak/Jennifer Tilly relationship were evidently untrue, as the two looked typically couple-y as usual – Jennifer in a beautiful outfit, Phil in saggy jeans and a hoodie.

Some celebrities on the “confirmed” list were no-shows, such as Camryn Manheim, Montel Williams, and Nelly. (Yes, I was more than disappointed about one of those absences!)

CORRECTION: Manheim was there, and Jen was still disappointed. -DM

Shannon Elizabeth and Derek Hough are still a couple and just as adorable as ever, with Shannon checking on Derek and his amateur poker experiences throughout the evening.

Contrary to all reports from the tournament, Antonio Esfandiari was not the first person eliminated from the tournament, as Mike “SirWatts” Watson (former WPT champion) was out of the tournament and standing with us at the bar when that announcement was made. Ouch.

New to my social radar were Mike Watson and Shane Schleger, both of whom were introduced to me by Gavin Griffin and Kristin Roberts and very nice to chat with.

Also met Jamie Gold for the first time, who was extremely friendly and psyched about his Aced Poker affiliation, though my question about his possible ownership in the company was met with the standard “details of the contract cannot be disclosed” line. Good brief chat anyway. (His calling card gives him the title “Poker Philanthropist.”)

Mekhi Phifer took the reigns during the rebuy period, grabbing the mic and encouraging players to rebuy (or even just donate) to his charity, The Vine Group, to help educational efforts in Africa. He was a great spokesperson for the organization and raised $78,270 for it, while managing to maintain his usual humble but outrageously sexy demeanor.

Funny, for all the poker entertainment on TV tonight, I probably won’t make it over to Fox Sports to see the latest Season 7 episode of the WPT. However, I can’t help but find myself following their celebrity invitational on the internet. Don’t really know what that means … maybe just that I definitely want some WPT action, but I’m just as happy following chip counts and hand updates at my leisure while I flip between WSOP Europe, High Stakes Poker, and maybe even a little Annie Duke meets Donald.

Seriously, looks to be an interesting final sprawl shaping up with 13 players remaining (Steve Sung and Paul Darden just went out). I bet the vibe inside the Commerce is pretty electric. This, frankly, is poker I’d probably want to watch on TV right now:

Remaining Players

Player	Player Name	Chipcount
	Jose Tavares	1,250,000
	Tom Hall	1,200,000
	Scott Clements	1,080,000
Average Chipcount: 666,153
	Frank Hustek	600,000
	Ottavio Tassone	520,000
	Nicholas Gonzalez	440,000
	Freddy Deeb	410,000
	Ali Nejad	400,000
	Bob Ruhl	300,000
	Teddy Monroe	250,000
	Jack Haley	225,000
	Mekhi Phifer	200,000
	Haig Papaian	200,000

For some reason I found this email that just came in about the WPT Celebrity Invitational quite amusing:

From: Samuel Quinto
Date: March 1, 2009 5:19:33 PM PST
To: Matthew Savage
Cc: Lindsay at World Poker Tour
Subject: Re: WPT Invitational Day 1 Chip Counts

There was an error on the chip count list,

Matt Damon, Edward Norton, Eric Bana, and Abraham Lincoln did not play the Celebrity Invitational. We apologize for any inconvenience this might has caused.

If Abraham Lincoln were playing in this event, of course, I’m pretty sure that would be “good for poker”.

UPDATE: The WPT seems to have a good sense of humor about it. Though I do see a little continued cred-jabbing between the Commerce and the WPT.

Attorneys for Tiltware, the parent company of Full Tilt Poker, filed a motion yesterday to dismiss Clonie Gowen’s case against them for $40 million as an alleged 1% owner of the company. For those interested in reading the motion, it can be read here.

Say what you will about Phil Hellmuth, but he has helped raise more than $1 million for Texas charities, despite gov-connected haters who, for a brief while, tried to squelch his fundraising efforts.

Brian the commenter down below inquired about whether or not you could have charity tourneys with money prizes in Texas, and whether or not you could advertise and promote them. The answer, of course, is … hard to say.

But I definitely have noticed a change back to the older, better ways. Back in the day, tourneys like La Riata used to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars by throwing a terrible-blind-structure event with lots of overpriced rebuys as wealthy Dallasites (and a few Batfaces) competed for a prize that generally consisted of a seat to the WSOP main event. But then the TABC (Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission) started threatening event hosts with liquor license gankage if they gave away a prize with any money value to the tournament winner — only a raffle was allowed, they said … and this of course was coming at the same time TABC was arresting drunk people in bars.

Anyhow, all this — which really, was fueled by some shady business practices of non-underground tournament operators, not any clear interpretation of the law — led to the bigger events to remove any competition for a prize … Dale Hansen canceled his huge fundraiser at Lone Star Park, Phil Hellmuth had to cancel an event in Houston that stood to raise at least a quarter-mil for the Susan B. Komen Foundation, and big charity events that carried on, like La Riata, basically had to take away every incentive for rebuys, which crippled fundraising efforts.

But after laying low for a couple years, charity events and the lawyers counseling their organizers seemed to re-reinterpreting Texas charity laws, hosting (and promoting) their poker-for-good-causes nonetheless — with real prizes! The Boys & Girls Clubs, Bea’s Kids … they all went off without a hitch. And earlier this summer, probably the biggest such event took place in San Antonio, with Tony and Eva Parker hosting a star-studded red-carpet charity tourney (emceed by Phil Hellmuth, of course) — resetting a standard that suggests it is indeed OK to give away a $10k+ prize package to raise hundreds of k.

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There’s a lot of action going on, now and into this weekend …

First off, in the online world, the WCOOP (World Championship of Online Poker) is going on on PokerStars. You can rail it live as an observer on PokerStars itself, of course, or if you’ve got an offline life you can follow it semi-live on the PokerStarsBlog in the capable hands of our own California Jen and some of your other favorite bloggers (Change100, Tuscaloosa Johnny, Otis).

Believe it or not, they’ve also got “TV” coverage of these big online tourneys — they’re about halfway through 33 of them. Check it out right here if you’ve got a half-hour to kill:

The new PokerStars TV will also be all over the EPT Barcelona, which just got underway — including some live video coverage viewable on the internet, along with more traditional blog-coverage and chip updates.

On the salty side of the pond, the Borgata Poker Open is getting heated in Atlantic City. That’s where Pauly’s at. And he’s covering all the action (along with the ever-illustrative Tropical Steve and poker-media journeyman Michael Friedman) on the official Borgata Blog. The WPT main event kicks off on Sunday. The WPT has their own blog-crew coverage, too — something called “The Muck”.

Meanwhile, I’m stuck here in Vegas, where it’s a Freerollin’ Saturday for me:

I start the day in Event #2 of the PokerListings Run Good Challenge. Supposedly we’re having some blind-structure issues with PokerStars, but regardless, it will be a chance to redeem myself from my lackluster Event #1 performance.

Then, later tomorrow evening, it’s the grand-opening tourney at the Hard Rock, where I’ll be playing against Phil Hellmuth, Anjela Brunson, Rick Fuller, Scott Fischman, Scott Ian (of Anthrax), Jeremiah Smith, Andre Agassi, Montel Williams, Randy Couture, Jermaine O’neal, Paul Pierce, and others for an important motorcycle. Will be texting in updates via CSR should you care to follow my quest against a field that should be a combination of great and terrible, with a less-than-skill-friendly blind-structure.

Click below for more detailed info on the event itself, and the motorcycle.

It really is shaping up to be a Good Poker September.

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From another HRH-lovin’ tipster (the words … photo by me):

Perhaps if the music thing doesn’t work out for Billy Bob, he can take up professional poker as his next gig.

Billy Bob Thornton was spotted playing poker in the new Poker Lounge at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Thursday night. He was joined by friends and bandmates from The Boxmasters in the back room of the lounge that some are calling the Billy Bob Thornton room – an oversized image of the actor/musician hangs on the wall above the table. Thornton was back inside the Poker Lounge Friday morning signing the large picture of himself. Billy Bob Thornton and The Boxmasters performed yesterday night at The Joint.

ALT CAP: Billy Bob Thornton doing his best Sammy Farha at the Hard Rock.