Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to poker Mr. Dwight Hiward — someone with the clever foresight to have been named after what would become a plausibly convenient typo for a popular basketball player’s name. A couple clicks reveal @pokerati’s new follower is way into poker. And hey, if his actual tweets turn out to be some new style of poker metaphor, gotta say … a little rough, but I think I like where you’re going with that, kid!

A Canadian gambler’s license plate asks: Want to go double or nothing?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_(betting_system)

Poker Gives: In a show of solidarity with clitoral activists worldwide, Pokeratizens at the table this week will be pulling down their hoodies.

Check it out … we love seeing Poker present in popular culture, and Buzzfeed dug up this kinda sexy-funny advert for Ladies Poker at the Adelaide Casino in Australia. The promotion is a few years old, but it made the BF spread honoring International Clitoris Awareness Week, a new real-holiday charity campaign. So this week only especially, do your lady a solid and pay a little extra attention to her pointer, yo.

Source:Buzzfeed: 14 Vagina Imagery Ads.
(No worries, totally SFW … though some may or may not find one strawberry strangely arousing.)

So you tell me … the new Old Spice commercial for a deodorant scent called “Hawkridge” features a poker player (from a pre-Texas Hold’em era, obv) engaging in the ultimate surrender, albeit under duress …

Mmm-hmm … “Hawk Ridge” also happens to be the street location of Howard Lederer’s $10 million manse, which the DOJ did not seize even though they at one point wanted to.

Coincidence?

Neither representatives from Old Spice nor the Lederer estate could be reached for comment when I voiced an inquiry in the general direction of relevant properties in this matter. (Kinda West-Southwest.)

OK, carry on … no matter how you or anyone around you smells.

Because, really, where else but would you go for such a proper schooling:

The ABCs of ABC poker.

Ya know, 10am is right around the corner … (and so is the WSOP!)

The news won’t stop breaking … and just because American online players may be crying in watered down beers … that’s not gonna stop one magnetic on-camera Croatian from signing a player sponsorship patch deal with Bodog, the original American-friendly online gambling operation to officially go rogue:

Tom Schneider

---

OP-ED

It’s time to have a poker player run for President of the United States. Forget Joe the Plumber. How about Tom the Gambler?

I actually gave serious consideration to running for President in 2012. However, when I woke up, it didn’t seem like such a great idea. I thought what could a gambler offer that others can’t? I came up with several ideas and am going to share one here. This is not an article about bashing one side or the other. I’m trying to show how gamblers typically get right to the root of the problem by viewing the world differently than others.

First, I wanted to identify a problem that 95 percent of Americans would agree was a problem, thus removing all political bias. The Problem: Politicians lie, misrepresent facts and gamble with our money. Do you agree?

In a debate, if a politician sounds convincing, we believe him. He can’t be lying, he sounds so sure. The debate is concluded and the viewers have no idea that the bastard lied for an hour straight. He made up stuff and pulled answers out of his ass to avoid having to say, “I don’t know.” (Note: when pulling numbers out of asses, avoid the sharp ones like 4 and 7.)

When trying to get the Healthcare bill passed one Senator made a huge deal about the American Medical Association (AMA) supporting the bill, thus trying to make the public feel better since all doctors support it. Did you know that only 17% of all doctors belong to the AMA, because most doctors don’t like the political stands the AMA takes? Did you know that a significant majority of doctors were opposed to the proposed Healthcare bill? It is outrageously disingenuous to act like doctors are supporting the bill.
Our elected officials say that if we pass a stimulus package, we will create one million new jobs…oops, sorry, we were wrong. No big deal, we will try something else. They are guessing with our money. I like idiots in a poker game, but I’m tired of idiots in Washington. It’s like all of us voters decided to put the worst poker player in the biggest game. Unfortunately, unlike poker, these idiots can’t get lucky with our money.

More…

Dig’em.

Is it wrong to care more about the results of this matchup than Daniel Negreanu vs. Isildur1?

It’s been too long since we shared with you the greatness of Nevada license plates. Fortunately, I don’t believe I’ve surrendered my claim to being the Top Parking-Lot Correspondent in Poker (even without a Bluff Award for that category). Especially since getting an iPhone … and in part thanks to Pokeratizens with their eyes on the road.

Here’s doozy from @PokerVixen. (Thanks, Lori!) We’ll have to take her word for it — because really, it is hard to drive and photograph* — but supposedly it says DGENRAT. LOL, is that a Mustang?

Meanwhile, here’s one I got — not sure it’s a poker player, but hey, it’s more likely to be Russ Hamilton than OJ Simpson driving this Jetta on Russell Rd., heading toward the south end of the Strip.

* WARNING: Pokerati supports safe driving, and encourages you NOT to photograph poker-related license plates while operating a motor vehicle. However, if you insist, please snap multiple shots and check later to see if you got one in focus. You should also wear your seatbelt just in case.

My Lithuanian is a bit rusty … but LOL, check it out, via 2+2 NVG (yeah, i went there this week) … a Lithuanian city council dude apparently has to answer to an ethics committee or something after being caught on video playing on PokerStars.

Can you imagine what a different story this would be if this were a US representative?

CardRunners, as you know, recently celebrated their 5th birthday … quite a milestone when you consider that means Jungleman couldn’t even drive yet when they first came into being.

As a reminder of where you can go for the best ROI on your gifted holiday monies, here’s a peek at poker in the old days, with CR honcho Taylor Caby showing how the poker skills they teach you at CardRunners played out in a different era:

And if you’re still too cheap/broke to pony up real bucks for education, they still have financial aid available allowing you to earn CardRunners credits through Truly Free Poker Training … TFPT is for current CardRunners members as well as those newbies who have yet to take seriously their resolution to be a winning poker player.

Not super-pokery, but this “captcha” gone awry did come via a link from Katkin in the course of talking poker-blogging bidness (shortly before crushing me in a Pokerati game at Aria Thursday night.) And it does raise questions of linguistic variance with a surprisingly non-controversial common phrase in poker parlance:

Funny to me … but probably not so much to any recent victim of sexual assault.

Also could be rather offensive to a poker player suffering egregious abuse at the hands of a dominating opponent … insensitivity to the latter being enough to discourage me from handing over all my identifying info to Boxbe.

Check it out … a new show from Jay Rosenkrantz and John Wray, aka KRANTZ of 2 Months 2 Million “fame” and JimmyLegs, CardRunners’ chief filmmaker. Their web-video series promises “high stakes, low comedy” … and as seen in the pilot episode here, it may be the most accurate (and funny) look at the degenerate side of online poker yet.

Seriously, LOLed for real multiple times. And more than 90,000 views after being up for just a couple weeks? Not even Durrrr and Jungleman draw those kinda numbers right out the gate. Might this be the show about poker (online poker specifically) that transcends Norman Chad and 2+2?

If so, you may wanna (finally!) start improving your game with poker training videos from CardRunners.

CR is a finalist for “favorite poker resource” in the 2010 Bluff Readers Choice Awards, too. Vote here!

Check it out, our good sponsored friends at CardRunners like to get a little creative sometimes — making poker training videos that hardly show cards. This one will be extra entertaining for those of you who recognize the name Ernest Thayer.

More nice work from JimmyLegs, aka John Wray.

Have a look at some of CR’s premier filmmaker’s efforts to enjoy himself while making videos generally of online poker screens.

That, of course, is all the more reason for you to sign up and give the training videos at CardRunners a try.

@Kevmath laid down the gauntlet on Twitter this evening on the ever-popular “Words With Friends” app. Soon @RealKidPoker and @Mark_Gahagan were in on the action, offering up their WWF user names publicly on twitfeed. Now I’m three-tabling them all headups.

Negreanu just countered back after I triple-word scored on “SIZED”. Seems he’s playing from his new iPad from NAPT at the Bike.

@RealKidPoker: “34,575 end lvl 4. Nice little comeback reminiscent of my start in EPT Vienna. A bit tired, and playing words with friends to pass time.”

Gahagan may have just pulled ahead with his 57-pointer “VIEW” off my “QUIDS”, but I’m not drawing dead yet. As for Kevmath, I’m on the warpath after he used a questionable “ER” to position off a triple word score.

If HR2267 had already passed, I’d be looking to lay some cash on this tonight.