Darvin Moon stood out among the ’09 November Nine not for the play that got him 2nd place (and $5.2 million) … but because he stood alone. The logger who had never been on a “big airplane” before the WSOP refused to accept upwards of a half million dollars to simply wear a patch for the likes of Full Tilt, PokerStars, or anyone else … because, basically he didn’t wanna be anyone’s bitch. (I’m paraphrasing, of course.)

But soon to be announced and official, the hapless poker multimillionaire from western Maryland has apparently caved — signing a deal with the Heartland Poker Tour to serve as their “ambassador” and wear HPT gear in all tourneys, including the WSOP.

This comes from a plenty reliable source; however, said source would not confirm (nor deny!) that Darvin Moon is near-broke and thus rethinking his aversion to wearing poker-related patches … but did confirm that no poker agents were involved in signing the agreement.

Moon, of course, was the unsignable runner-up at the 2009 WSOP … making him pretty much the opposite of Dennis Phillips, and the only November Niner ever not to be patched up at the main event final table. He also snubbed the WSOP this past November by turning down repeated invitations to be part of 2010 November Nine festivities in Las Vegas, opting instead to play a $1k HPT event at the Meskwaki Casino Bingo Hotel in Tama, Iowa.

One of my favorite fights with Katkin is on the value of Darvin Moon as a sponsored player. I dig the dude as a character … and consider him good for … nay, great extra=solid for poker — while Katkin (clearly stuck in his ’06-’07ish glory-days poker-world mindset) I think believes his donk play and non-pro, non-online nature make him the wrong guy for the WSOP to celebrate in their commercials. To which I say … hater.

Love a good Twitter fight … but sometimes social media can hurt!

Was gettin’ all geared up for an exciting #FollowFriday when I got this reminder of how much things have changed. Alas …

But hey, I’ll always have this bit of inspiration — recorded during the 2006 WPBT Winter Classic, shortly after passage of the UIGEA … a time when Twitter hardly existed and I believed, along with Phil Hellmuth, that poker’s future was in ringtones:

Oliver Tse poker future

ALT HED: Oliver Tweetse

Episode 69: Cutting Loose with Change100 – Dan and Pauly give Change100 a little guff for working “Michalski hours” after showing up at 9pm. Her WSOP assignment is official over, but she’s at the Rio to check out the last bits of Day 7 as a self-admitted scenster. A potential elimination hand occurs during the beginning of the episode and Pauly ditches the crew to cover the action inside the ropes. Meanwhile, Dan and Change100 have a leisurely chat about how much more enjoyable the WSOP is when you don’t have to be running around like a madman covering hands.

Episode 70: Emerging Narratives and November Nine No-Names with Benjo – The power trio returns for a rare episode featuring Dan, Benjo, and Pauly. While sweating the final four tables, Benjo quickly recaps some of the more interesting narratives from the Main Event. The discussions shifts towards whether or not we care if the final nine players are a bunch of unknowns.

Episode 71: Vampire Weekend with Benjo – During the last break of Day 7, the agents were slithering around the Amazon Ballroom and the hallways sucking the blood out of anyone in still alive in the Main Event without an endorsement deal. Benjo and Pauly discuss the sleazy side of poker and their plans to take over the live updates and become the biggest player management agency at the 2011 WSOP with BrokeDickPoker.com

Complete Tao of Pokerati archives
Change100
Benjo (translated)

Gotta love Benjo and Pauly for keeping me (and therefore you) updated not just on results … but more so with what’s really happening on the Amazon floor as the first of three televised events — the $50k Players Championship — gets down to the final table.

Episode 8: 50k Agent Mix

Pauly and TOP’s ready stand-in Benjo describe events on the rail in the closing moments of the final table bubble for the 50K Players Championship. They also spy on a potential endorsement deal being negotiated in the far corner of the Amazon Ballroom

Here, btw, are the final table players in the $50k (8-Game) Mix, from PokerNews:

Seat 1: David “Bakes” Baker – 3,095,000
Seat 2: Mikael Thuritz – 2,300,000
Seat 3: Vladimir Schmelev – 1,925,000
Seat 4: John Juanda – 2,620,000
Seat 5: Daniel Alaei – 1,705,000
Seat 6: Michael Mizrachi – 2,620,000
Seat 7: David Oppenheim – 460,000
Seat 8: Robert Mizrachi – 3,125,000

More…

photo: Alan Barry

Check it out … Rising poker diva Liv Boeree is in the December issue of British Maxim, which just recently went up online. While some in poker may scoff at her mere $200k in lifetime tournament winnings, hey, there’s not an online poker site in sight on this photo shoot, and yet Maxim is still interested enough to show sexually suggestive pictures of her ask about her life on a farm rolling around in mud? That’s pretty cool.

(Big score for her agents at No-Limit Management?)

We also learn she’s a total metal chick. Like she can actually rock out to Pantera on guitar. Dude. Go Liv Boeree … Win stuff!

ALT HED: Liv Boeree has never masturbated a pig.

It’s true. She says so herself. Read it.

Pat Poels went out yesterday. And TBR, relying on the scurrilous poker media’s “reporting” that I am a cooler and getting antsy about making the money today, requested, “Don’t come anywhere near my table today.”

So fine. I didn’t. And in returning the favor, The Big Randy gave me confirmation that people who are superstitious are measurably less likely to win the main event. He had one guy to be really careful of today, sitting to his left, and on the third hand he got it all-in on a race … and lost … QQ < AK. OK, I swear I feel bad. But this really is what today's all about -- the crushing of hopes and dreams. And unless Team Pokerati can sneak up on some remaining big stacks to slap a patch on them -- which I'm pretty sure is near impossible with all the Poker Royalty agents circling healthy-chipped unknowns -- that means it's up to Tom "1-for-20" Schneider to survive past the bubble, go really deep to re-save the family farm his 2009 WSOP, and hopefully make a final table for my personal branding benefit.

Go @DonkeyBomber!

UPDATE: What I meant to say was good game, Randy. You played very well and gave it a valiant effort. Sometimes you just get unlucky. Better luck next year. You always have our encouragement and support. lol.

A patch-wearing Team Pokerati player goes almost-deep in the $1k Stimulus Special, and Pauly seizes on his own feint connection to the player by becoming an dirty-rotten-scoundrel agent to potentially exploit his winnings. That’s my take on it … Pauly sees things a bit differently, however, and contends he’s the one looking out for players, because he’s the one sweating their action and making sure they get appropriately paid for their torso real estate. All I know is that Pauly claims to now be first-time WSOP casher Cliff Fisher’s representative, and Cliff busted out of the tourney shortly after Pauly started hounding him.

Tao of Pokerati at the 40th WSOP
Las Vegas, NV

Episode 11.11: Donkey Agents
5:05
[audio:tao/TaoPokerati_WSOP_AgentsClliff_11.mp3]

Peter Eastgate won it. Age 22. New Great Dane. It’s too late, of course for the newspapers (East Coast, at least) to get the results into the paper … so you’ll have to watch it plausibly live on ESPN!

(Actually, I suspect a few midwestern papers, at least, will be able to get something in at the last moment — or they’ll just use the internet … bummer that it didn’t go a bit longer?)

A few notes from the coronation:

The Poker Royalty agents exchanged little smiley fist bumps upon Eastgate’s victory. Not sure what that means — but I gotta think a young online Scandi pro has got to be relatively marketable.

Where’s Norman Chad? Nick Geber is taking on the role as post-game interviewer.

Eastgate doesn’t speak fantastic English, and though the Danes will likely be taking some hefty tax (an issue broached by Geber), he can still probably afford a lot of Rosetta Stone. The Danish early-career Dirk Nowitzki of Poker? OK, bad comparison … but it’s late, people are tired, and, frankly, there’s kinda an eerie calm in the Penn & Teller Theater, as the enormity of Eastgate’s achievement still seems to be setting in.

Ouch … on a baddish beat where his trip aces with a jack kicker lost to a trip aces with a nine.

That means with 27 players left, there are only two I had heard of before the event started: Brandon Cantu and Tiffany Michelle. I gotta say, though our interaction has been limited to accepting MySpace friend requests and sharing a power outlet in the press box, I’m so ready to jump on the Tiffany Michelle bandwagon. If I’m gonna cheer lead for anyone right now, it’s gonna be her.

I’m almost afraid to comment too much on what her current chip position and status as Last Woman Standing means for fear of the jinx factor. And really, the relevance of anything anyone might have to say about her still depends on the fall of fuckin’ cards. But one thing is for sure, right now, going into the penultimate day of WSOP poker, there is no more valuable commodity player still alive in the main event than 24-year-old Tiffany Michelle — and based on the way agents and backers and Hollywood Daves are all up in her bidness, you can tell I’m not the only one to realize how much is really riding on her action.

I continue to work the hallways and set up executive-journo shop this time outside the payouts cage — where Pauly teaches me how to figure out who’s really backing whom … but not before we get distracted by a player sponsorship deal taking shape right before our very eyes, as a PartyPoker representative exchanges pleasantries with guys who clearly love the show Entourage agents from Poker Royalty. (Nothing would become of these pre-negotiations, however, as the lone remaining PartyPoker player would go from chip leader to out in 71st place in less than a day — falling just 62 spots short of the ever-valuable final table that various poker bizzers are jockeying for a piece of.)

Episode 27: Payouts and Payoffs

Supposedly the 2008 WSOP has been the “Year of the Pro”. Arguably so … but that puts a lot of pressure on Mike Matusow to make the final table. Otherwise, might we be looking at something in November that ain’t too different from a deep-stack donkament? Think about it … take a typical 1500 WSOP tourney and multiply by … yikes! 6.66 — ooh, there’s that number again! Evil-creepy!

But hey, numbers are numbers, and investigative math leads us to some pretty damning evidence:

$1,500 NLH x 1% of Satan = $10k main event.

Now factor in all the skulls seen in 2008 poker apparel … uh-huh, exactly. So it’s all on Matusow now, obviously, to be the Charlie Daniels of Poker.

Meanwhile, hallway rumors are that Poker Royalty is trying to negotiate a deal to represent the Antichrist as we get closer to the final table.

Jack Effel and Oliver Tse

(Apologies for the blur, but I had to kick into full-on Stalkerati mode and take these shots while running.)

Sorry for the brief delay in getting new episodes of Tao of Pokerati to you. Our production crew was being held hostage by our fellow podcast colleague/competitors at Poker Road and ESPN! They apparently went to all lengths possible to keep the T-O-P down, but we knew it was only a matter of time before the military arrived, freed the T-O-P crew, and deprogrammed the secret mental suggestion they implanted in the hosts’ brains to drink more and podcast less.

This special double-album episode starts out with an update from my undercover investigative reporting on the trials and travails of branding players with sticky fabrics, and from there, Dr. Pauly and I dig in to what’s at stake in some of the cutthroat agent warfare going on inside and outside the ropes during the main event.

Episode 22: Agent Oranges