La Sengphet took down another one on the WSOP-circuit — winning a $345 NLH at the Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, Calif. for her fourth WSOP-C victory (third in a ring-bearing event) and a $25k payday. Her other half, David Clark, made a final table the day before, and won his second ring just a couple stops earlier at WSOP-Tahoe. Their story is becoming sickeningly charming … perhaps even inspirational … showing that true love and poker success can go hand-in-hand for a couple of old-fashioned rounders making their way across an ever-unpredictable poker landscape.

(That, or … Go Team Pokerati!)

More…

photo: Jim Schutze / Dallas Observer

Longtime friend of Pokerati and poker pro Gregg Merkow took a rough beat early yesterday morning when fire engulfed two of his restaurants in Dallas. A four-alarm blaze destroyed The Hurricane Grill and the Greenville Bar & Grill, owned by Merkow, along with Mick’s bar and Terilli’s, the Italian restaurant where the fire reportedly started. It’s one of the most historic blocks of Dallas nightlife on Greenville Avenue — and thus citizens are concerned about saving what they can of the buildings even after they burnt virtually to the ground.

More on the fire and its aftermath here.

Because we care about poker players, and due diligence, we’d throw our friends under the bus in a second for a scandalous hedline + Google juice, we couldn’t help but ask whether or not perhaps he’d been running bad lately and this fire, started at a time when the structure was safely empty, might not have been a nefarious play for insurance dollars. Turns out that Merkow didn’t even have insurance on these legendary properties that may or may not have helped launch a poker career.

While non-poker people in Dallas debate how that could be (and who should ultimately be responsible), one of the players in his regular 10/25/50 NLH/PLO game explained, “It’s Merkow. He’s a gambler.”

Our sympathy for his loss … sucks, dude. Merkow speaks with the Associated Press shortly after the fire that had nothing to do with poker here:

A sign of how things change … back in 2005 the already legendary TJ Cloutier was still tearing it up. But in 2010, the WSOP bracelet he won in the 2005 $5k NLHE is now for sale on eBay. I guess he didn’t cash big enough via the sale of PokerPages to buy it back Bummer, dude. We feel ya. Not sure where the big fields are coming from in LA, AC, Australia, and France … everybody seems broke. But either way, you get the sense that those who are playing are doing so with far more seriousness than the fields were back in the day when TJ won this:

The seller is Plano Pawn Shop (“specializing in fine jewelry and firearms”), who has a 100 percent positive feedback rating after 314 eBay sales. Plano, of course, is the suburb next door to TJ’s home in Richardson … and on the way to the Choctaw Casino in Oklahoma, not to mention some of the bigger private games in the Dallas area.

UPDATE: His bracelet from the Scotty Nguyen Poker Challenge IV is also up for sale.

Via Bluff Magazine.

photo: Jennifer Browning

Meet Sharron, the new tourney director at The Lodge.

There are lots of amateur poker leagues out there, and with all due respect, we don’t pay as much attention to them as we used to unless there’s allegations of grift and/or a plot to kill the guy running it with snakes. However, the Lodge Amateur Poker League has always been near and dear to Pokerati’s heart.

Back in the early boom days, All In magazine called it “The best amateur tournament in America!” Ahh, we were having some good after-church strip-club times every Sunday, with more and more players getting better each week … in pursuit of not just gift certificates and lap-dance coupons, but also, and believe it or not more important than seeing boobs for most, a seat in a $1,500 WSOP event (travel expenses included, of course).

But like so much in poker, after Dan left it eventually lost its way. The tournament carried on, but allegations of chip dumping and cheating (yes, in an amateur tourney) made it lose its luster. Then came the Texas sin tax that made this “free” tournament a $0+5 NLH — with that whole $5 going to the State — and field sizes continued to dwindle.

Courts have since ruled that tax unconstitutional, so the game is free again … and now the Lodge — named Best Strip Club in America at the 2008 Exotic Dancer Awards in Las Vegas, btw — has renewed its commitment to making its weekly amateur poker tournament not just the best in Texas, but tops anywhere. The new TD cracking the poker whip: Sharron Nix.

🙂

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Players to Watch

Negreanu

Wahlbeck

Johnston

Shinn

Turner

Flack

Boukai

Recapping the conclusion of Monday’s play… and looking forward at Tuesday’s action ready to get underway.

Foley Flies Home a Winner

Ray Foley, a business manager for Chrysler Financial, bested Brandon Cantu headsup to take down the $1,500 NL Holdem event early Tuesday morning, collecting $657,969 along with his first WSOP bracelet. Cantu was hoping to pick up his second, starting heads-up play and had Foley drawing to two outs in what appeared to be the final hand, but Foley caught a third ten on the turn to pass Cantu’s flopped pair of kings to take the lead. Foley’s Q-J outkicked Cantu’s J-7 on a jack high board in the final hand to send Foley, a resident of Northville, Michigan home the winner. Alex Jacob was the only other notable at the final table, finishing third.

Graham Cracks Russian, Wins PLO World Title

The $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha World Championship was won by Matt Graham, coming back from a 9 to 1 chip deficit to win his second career WSOP bracelet. The other three previous WSOP bracelet winners finished 7th, 8th and 9th (Josh Arieh, Richard Austin and Barry Greenstein respectively).

Five Remain in 5k Shootout

The final table of the $5,000 NL Holdem Shootout is now set, and here’s how the players will be seated, each with 1,500,000 in chips when play resumes at 2pm PT:

Seat 1: Maxim Lykov – 900000
Seat 2: Danny Wong – 900000
Seat 3: Andrew Lichtenberger – 900000
Seat 4: Peter Traply – 900000
Seat 5: Nasr El Nasr – 900000

Turner Hopes To Turn It On Again

14 players remain in the $2,500 8-Game Mixed event with Jon Turner (469,200) the chip leader when play resumes at 2pm. Other notables returning: Adam Friedman (325,800), Layne Flack (283,400), former MMA fighter and bracelet winner Rami Boukai (137,700), and Jimmy Fricke (47,400).

Seniors Day 2

Lloyd Shinn of Dallas (86,500) leads the 397 players returning for Day 2 of the $1,000 Seniors NL Holdem World Championship at 2pm. Former WPT winner Eric Hershler (82,500) is in second. A few names stand out among the remaining players, such as Jerry Reed (38,500), former WSOP Main Event winner Berry Johnston (29,400), “Minneapolis Jim” Meehan (27,400), and Hall of Famer Barbara Enright (24,600).

Razzerific!

Day 2 of the $2,500 Razz has Warwick Mirzikinian the leader (59,400) of the 118 players returning at 2pm on Tuesday. The field started with 315 players, only 32 making the money. Notables also returning include: David Chiu (41,800), Kenna James (38,600), Ville Wahlbeck (35,300), Justin Bonomo (30,600), Daniel Negreanu (21,900), and Archie Karas (15,900).

Tuesday’s Tournaments

Another two tournaments on Tuesday, starting with the $10,000 Pot-Limit Holdem World Championship, won last year by Nenad Medic for almost $800,000 in a field of 352. The 5pm tournament is the debut of the $2,500 Omaha 8 or Better event. The WSOP Staff Guide projects a field of 370 for the 10k PL Holdem event, while in the $2,500 OHL, a field of 525 is projected.

After spending quite a bit of time as the small stack, Dallas’ own Allen Carter bested the most recent WPT Final table at the Southern Poker Championship in Biloxi, MS, taking home $1,000,000, an entry into the WPT Championship, and his first major bracelet. This win also marked his first 6-figure drag.

Allen is a member of a very elite group of poker players. Not because of his new bracelet or his arguable transition to pro ranks. It actually has little to do with how he plays, but more to do with why he plays. In my opinion, there are about 5 different kinds of players. Let me also note that I recognize that the majority of players belong to more than one of each.

1) Those who play for fun (Think Guy Laliberte)

Even his txt msgs have the right attitude.

2) Those who play for profit (Tom Schneider)
3) Those who play for action (Dan Michalski)
4) Those who play because of addiction (Endless list)
5) Those who play for lack of better options (Think tomorrow’s Madsen and other young guns turn college drop-outs of today)
…and finally…
6) Those who play purely for competition (Allen Carter)

I first met Allen in ’06 in the DFW airport, waiting to board a flight to the WSOP. He had won an entry into the Main Event through and online tournament. Actually, I should be clear,… He won FOUR entries. Pretty awesome in its own right, but totally redonkulous if you consider that he did all of it in only 6 attempts! And I believe that I remember he also came in 2nd in another one of those events.

You can’t enjoy success like that if you can’t commit yourself completely and exclusively to a single player category. And in case it isn’t obvious, the only two categories capable of supporting such are 1) Profit and 2) Competition. Allen has expressed to me multiple times that competition is his only reason for playing. Without that, he simply won’t play.

I understand that this philosophy almost completely contradicts the principles of the only other successful player category, profit, where you try to find the juiciest and softest game available. But maybe what Allen has figured out is that as long as you have enough water in the sports bottle (bankroll), you should always opt to play against the young, tall, black team, and never against the short, white, computer nerd, poker enthusiasts. Because with poker, unlike any other sport, you can put yourself or find yourself in the ‘big game’ at any time. This time it was a white, 40-something, former CPA from Dallas who prepared for and conquered the biggest game of his life. While he was preparing, you were checking your fish lists and looking for the softest SnG’s you could find.

Reminded via a Tiffany Michelle MySpace status update — “Excited about the Cereus launch this week!”:

The player pools, tables, tourneys, etc. from Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet magically merge today.

Trying to keep an open mind … because theoretically it is possible that the combination of two sites caught in the biggest cheating scandals in the nascent history of the online poker industry — having learned painful lessons firsthand — could become a paragon of integrity and security, a model for fully legal American online poker in the future.

But I just can’t help to think back to the Dallas underground … when a saturated market had rooms and games beginning to merge, two shady operators joining forces seldom led to anything good (save for some pretty juicy opening-weekend tourneys).

That’s my bias, I suppose … but with that in the back of my mind, I can’t help but think of how one of these sites seemed rotten at the core (with the exception of Mark Seif, I’ve yet to hear any former employee say anything good about Absolute), and the other … well, sure, they’ve changed management and have plenty of good peeps working for them (Annie Duke, Phil Hellmuth, Mean Gene, et al.) … but the top of the pyramid hasn’t really changed as far as we can tell. And with all due respect to those who are just trying to throw good poker times … the mysterious, closely-guarded nature of Tokwiro+Kahnawake+UB+Chief Joe operating on the protected lands of the Mohawk Nation (with offices in Costa Rica) … that’s the definition of shady! Sorry, it just is.

Still, with $22 million in refunds, the action’s gotta be good.

Today also happens to be the anniversary of “Who Shot JR?” Twenty-eight years ago today a bajillion people were watching Dallas to find out the answer:

Kinda interesting because this gave birth to the concept of a TV cliffhanger — which is essentially what the WSOP was going for with the November Nine. Viewers from 53 countries tuned in to see JR get shot … sparking seven months of promotional speculation, and by the time the winner answer was revealed on an historic two-hour special, 11 new countries had signed up the show to run on their networks.