It occurred to me I couldn’t just leave “Doyle Brunson Dies” as the final post on this blog. That would be like ending Star Wars after The Force Awakens. But it’s a new era for poker, indeed. Records already are falling, and we’re almost certain the Main Event will finally break the 2006 record for largest field. And goodbye Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino … the Horseshoe is the World Series of Poker’s new home. Sad that both Mike Sexton and Brunson aren’t around to see it.
(Image: Robert Goldfarb / Pokerati)
The WSOP’s last year at Binion’s Horseshoe, downtown, was in 2004, which also happened to be Pokerati’s first WSOP. Our traffic then was about 12, and our editorial strategy was to tell friends in Texas what was going on in Las Vegas — complete with results of local players they might recognize from the Dallas underground. To promote this new blog thing, I printed up business cards with this site’s web address and the tagline, “Dude, are you thinking ’bout poker?” I left them atop the urinals at Binion’s men’s rooms (captive audience) and watched the traffic quickly grow to about 40.
It was a good run, but now it’s time for me to move on. Actually, 10 years ago was probably an even better time. But so is now, on the cusp of another poker growth spurt — if not another poker boom, then definitely a poker surge. For certain, a new poker era.
Jeff has a great show tonight, we are lucky to speak with Shaun Deeb who has won 3 Pokerstars SCOOP events already this series. Shaun talks to JW about his victories and what is in store with him this summer at the WSOP. Next up we speak to Dave Ferrara who is a Las Vegas poker player and blogger for Pokerati.com.
A few interesting things have taken place since the implosion of online poker we’ve been warning you about here at Pokerati for about nine months became a reality.
We’ll save the 9/11 comparisons for later — because no one has died yet — and it’s just kinda coincidental that the DOJ has 9 charges against 11 defendants. But there seems to be a need for people to talk through these matters openly and honestly … and in kinda an organic way, the few truly independent operations (that don’t rely on Stars, Tilt, or UB for their existence) have come together to fill that void.
What began with appearances on an “EMERGENCY EPISODE!!!!” of Donkdown radio has migrated to a 24/7 live podcast put together by @AgentMarco from QuadJacks.
It’s been a rather loose-aggressive media emergence … with old-school cooperation in play. Pokerati has taken part … Tom Schneider, myself were on for the first few hours, Mark Gahagan is on now, and I’m about to rejoin to share some new information. Others that have been on have included Dutch Boyd, Scott Matusow, Micon-Brandon-and-Dandruff from Donkdown, The Maven, Kevmath, Pete the Blunt-smoker, Thomas the Rapper … as well as just regular ole online poker players sharing their stories about how a “little” government action has greatly affected their lives.
Anyhow, blah blah blah to infinity … the podcast that won’t stop is still going on — they’ve been going for 48 hours so far, with no sign of stopping, even if Marco eventually needs a nap. More than 1,000 listeners at this moment, so check out the chat room and keep it on for background music. Here’s the link:
First the good news: I’ve finally made my way into actually working in the “poker media” (not counting the two months I worked during the 2009 WSOP at PokerNews) by accepting a position working with Bluff magazine. The bad news is that one of the conditions is that I’m no longer able to write here at Pokerati. To be honest, I’m not thrilled by that particular condition, but those are the sacrifices one needs to make sometimes. You realize how fragile things can be in the poker media when someone as talented as Change100 was let go from PokerNews this week.
Dan is more than capable to handle things here at Pokerati, and there’s several possible things in the coming months that may make me regret this decision. I know the site will continue to grow and I hope for the best, and I’ll still make my appearance in the comments as needed. I appreciate Dan giving me my break in May of 2008 after enduring my hundreds of comments to his posts. Thanks again, and hopefully I can do with Bluff what I’ve done for Pokerati over the coming months.
Kevin Mathers, the venerable 2+2 moderator and longtime blogger-editor at Pokerati, will not be posting here for the foreseeable future.
No joke … he has been relieved indefinitely from Pokerati blogging duties. Technically, we had to “let him go”. Sucks, but we just couldn’t afford the increasingly valuable services of the hottest independent info-tweeter in poker. Here is a copy of his termination papers:
Kevin, I saw your interview on TWIP. Good job. I also just read Can you send me relevant threads from 2+2?
Hey, so, you are fired. Sorry. Hard times.
I really wanted to believe you were a bot.
See you on Twitter or something?
Rumor is Kevmath is headed to the minor leagues Bluff, where he and Jess Welman would form quite the menacingly mighty poker-reportage duo. Of course without Kevmath, Pokerati will change … we’ve got Gahagan to work double time and some other changes in store, but we might have to cut back on some previously standard coverage elements, such as “facts”.
But @Kevmath did leave behnd a Pokerati farewell … after 30 months, 579 posts, and 1,642 comments, all of which helped make this a better place … seriously, how lucky were we to have him as long as we did? Glad the “for hire” media finally came around.
Check back to read what hopefully won’t be the last time we see @Kevmath around these parts.
The World Series of Poker starts on Friday, and the poker media (except for www.wsop.com) are getting ready with their various previews and other stuff to get their readers into the mood for six weeks of tournament action. Part of that is the fifth annual WSOP fantasy draft over at ESPN.com. Unfortunately, Pokerati’s own Dan Michalski apparently missed the conference call (he had the #1 pick) so here were the twelve participants in this year’s draft:
Eric Baldwin
Lance Bradley – Editor at Bluff Magazine
Andrew Feldman – Poker Editor at ESPN.com
Chad Holloway – Poker Pro Magazine
Howard Lederer
Bernard Lee
Daniel Negreanu – Defending champion
Dennis Phillips
Steve “Chops” Preiss – Wicked Chops Poker
Mark Seif
Gavin Smith
Gary Wise
Each participant made eight picks in the draft and the handy chart below displays their selections by round:
A detailed analysis from Feldman on the selections can be found at www.espn.com/poker
Page 2 features how points are earned and my selections:
Poker was exploding. On April 20, 2004 (420, dooood!) Pokerati.com went live. WTF was I thinking? Happy birthday to us. The concept was simple, and reflected in our subtitle: “Are you thinking about poker?” I was. A lot. And so were my friends.
We of course weren’t the only ones. Another new site also went live that same week … FullTiltPoker.com. Their launch was the subject of our first post. Huh … it’s been quite a ride to say the least — I’m not sure Durrrr was even born yet! What I do know is that I had a lot more hair back then.
Now, six years since, I actually think poker is about to implode.
I know I’m in the minority amongst the well-informed and so-called poker media on this … but gather round folks … we’ve seen implosions in Vegas before, and they always make for a good show. You’ll hear and feel the charges — boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom … and then there’s a pause before the support beams fall and moments later what once stood gloriously is collapsing on top of itself leaving behind jagged piles of rubble and a spectacular cloud of dust. It’s all part of clearing the way to build something even more fantastic than anyone previously conceived.
A little self-promotion … check out the latest issue of Southwest Spirit magazine. The cover story is a feature on cruises. Scroll about 4/5 down the page; yours truly speaks as an expert on all things gambling … and give my tips to cruisers on how to enjoy the most bang for their ocean-gambling buck at not just Texas Hold’em, but also slots, blackjack, and roulette.
LOL, if only they really knew …
Pick up a copy in a Southwest Airlines seat back near you.
Poker 2 Nite has returned for their 2nd season, this time they’re on Versus, as Fox Sports Net had various restrictions on what Scott Huff and Joe Sebok could actually cover on the show, especially with online poker. Joe Stapleton is no longer the head writer, replaced by the people behind Wicked Chops Poker taking over the writing.
Segment one appears below, but stayed tuned for the special Pokerati mention in segment three on page 2:
Also last week, kinda funny, I had just shown up in the tournament room at the Commerce when I was supposedly simultaneously in front of a computer, chatting in the LAPC livecam chat room:
(Thanks to all looking out for this site’s good name.)
6:54 pokerati: maybe we can get uyou involved somehow with some streams like this..
6:54 WhoJedi: Pokerati is Dan, is this Dan?
6:54 WhoJedi: That would be cool.
6:54 pokerati: nosir
6:55 pokerati: i did NOT no there was a pokerat that wud be cinfused
6:55 pokerati: i am NOT impostering
6:55 WhoJedi: lol More…
Chet in Wisconsin writes in wanting to know why the slowdown recently from Pokerati …
Is there some reason the most recent article is dated the 17th, 5 days ago?
There is a reason for that, and we may or may not tell you eventually. My apologies to the poker world for not letting other media know what they should be writing about taking a break.
Woke up this morning talking a little Full Tilt with The Poker Beat crew … and looking back through some old archives …
I remember hearing about this “new site” from Clonie way back before they even existed (and the UIGEA was about as unimaginable as Barack Obama). Was looking to see if I happened to write anything that woulda implied a belief in ownership even before Pokerati’s traffic was borne from Google searches for “Clonie Gowan naked”.
I did not find anything resembling contractual evidence, but I did come across this site’s first-ever post … which seems a bit ironic in hindsight. For those wanting to join me in this self-indulgent quest for perspective:
APRIL 21, 2004 ON TILT?
It seems like everyone and their grandmother is opening up an online poker room these days. And why not? Each imaginary table that pops open in the cyberether forms a little vortex of constant pecuniary intake (no matter what’s happening in the game itself). But is the market at a saturation point?
Probably so, but that didn’t stop Full Tilt Poker from going online this week. Despite the competition, I suspect this site — a venture put together by a bunch of top pros (Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson, Howard Lederer, Phil Gordon, et al.) — will fare well. Haven’t played it yet, but at first glance they’ve upped the graphical interface significantly. And the ability to give your avatar facial expressions … very cool. Could change the online game when you think about it.
Posted by Dan Michalski on April 21, 2004 09:20 AM
Click the links, which are archived.org … bias or not, honestly surprising that the judge wouldn’t give these sorts of old records a look, let alone her attorneys a chance to depose the other defendants about them.
LOL: Is the market at a saturation point?
ALT HED: Kicking myself for not using an affiliate code
It’s been a busy year for Pokerati — so much effed up poker news to chatter at, presumably at the expense of workplace productivity. Final year-end stats are in …
And, of course, we wouldn’t want to forget our foreign-lingual pals … without whom we couldn’t spread our loose-aggressive reporting worldwide as if it might actually be fact:
Pokerati, as you may or may not know, is up for a Bluff Magazine Readers Choice Award — “Top Poker Blog of 2009”. Yippee. And The Poker Beat is a nominee for “Best Poker Podcast”. It’s always nice to see hard work yield some semblance of results. Tao of Poker+Wicked Chops+Poker News Daily=whatever. Other people are up for other things, too. Hey, really, they all deserve it.
We got a pretty sophisticated audience at Pokerati. All you lawyers, execs, programmers, Congresspeople, and part-time rodeo clowns … I gotta say, the search engine traffic is pretty dull compared to what brings people to sites like this and this. But while most of our search traffic comes from blase matter-of-factoids like Pokerati, WSOP, deep stack tournaments, and Julie Schneider stack em up, we do get a few visitors looking for peculiar, perverted, and/or misinformed content:
tied up hands and feet
lesbian poker
naked fat chick
joe cada is a jew?
hogtied men
the novembrists
oliver tse
are maria and tiffany gay
are the poker girls amazing race gay
(and lots of variants of the above theme)
joe cada shirtless
pictures of amy calistri nude
mitch garber asshole
hot boys guy donkeys
hookers at the commerce casino
óòðî
chau giang rub titties
LOL. Seriously … who are you people? And were you able to find everything you’re looking for?
