This will be my last post here at PokerWorks. I depart the blog family incredibly thankful to Linda for the opportunity to write here. I’ll be concentrating more on writing feature pieces and tournament coverage for PokerNews, and will continue to blog about poker, Hollywood, music, American Idol and my misadventures with Showcase and Pauly over at my original home, Pot Committed.

Please don’t forget about my friends who are still blogging away for the PW family. I’ll certainly still be reading them every day.

So, goodnight. Good luck at the tables. And thank you.

There’s a reason Pauly dubbed Amy Calistri as “the Nancy Drew of poker.” Amy has the uncanny knack for getting to the bottom of any story, as she just did with the Case of the Shitty Ladies’ Event Payouts. Says Amy:

“I realized that the structure has a break in payouts for fields larger than 1000 players. For example, 27 players (or three tables of nine) get paid for fields between 200-299, 36 players (or four tables of nine) get paid for fields between 300-399, and so it goes in 100 player increments. So if you played in a field of 300 players, 36 players got paid or 12% of the field. If your field was 399 players, 36 players got paid or just over 9% of the field. But the 100 player increments stop at 1000 and increase to 500 player increments. If you played in a field of 1000-1499, 99 players (or eleven tables of nine got paid. If you played in a field of 1000 players, 99 got paid or 9.9% of the field. But if you played in a field of 1499, 99 got paid or just 6.6% of the field.”

So there you have it. Good to know Harrah’s isn’t just screwing over women (and old people, as the seniors event drew over 1,800), they’re screwing over everyone. Which still doesn’t make it right. But at least they’re equal opportunity screwers. Read the rest of this entry »

Remember a few weeks ago when I was told that the WSOP payout schedules were made relative to the amount of the event’s buy-in?

Event # 46  $1,000 Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo.  668 entries, 64 places paid.  (9.6% of field)

Event # 51 $1,000 S.H.O.E.  730 entrants, 72 places paid.  (9.86% of field)

Event # 17 $1,000 Ladies No-Limit Hold’em.  1286 entrants, 99 places paid (7.7% of the field).

STILL, no one at Harrah’s can explain to me why this is…

I sat down. I stood up. I paced. I went to the Poker Kitchen for some cookies and Red Bull. And then I paced some more. I half-heartedly read an abandoned copy of Bluff Magazine. And then I gave it away to some other guy who seemed to be in the same mindframe as I was.

Sit down. Stand up. Pace. Look over at the table. Breathe when he finally folds his hand/drags the pot/ stacks his chips. Give encouragement with a reassuring smile. Read the rest of this entry »

“Oh my God, she’s so serious!” cried the woman with cropped gray hair who sat on my right in the 1 seat.

Just minutes ago she had given me her business card. She worked at the Ocean’s 11 Casino in San Diego County. We had chatted for a few minutes before the cards went in the air. And now, maybe four orbits into the tournament, I thought she was typical dead money like the rest of my table.

“This is serious.” I shot back. “This is the World Series of Poker. I don’t see how it gets more serious than this.” Read the rest of this entry »

There it is, kids. A cool grand. $500 in benjamins and my precious lammer. It’s all been traded in for a seating card at the WSOP Ladies Event, which will kick off Sunday at noon.

I have what I believe will be a late-break table as well as a $50 last-longer with PokerNews’ on-air hostess Tiffany Michelle. I got some decent sleep last night and I’m on the early shift today, so hopefully it won’t be too late a night at the Rio for me.  I’m already running through potential outfits in my head.

I’m ready to kick ass and take names. Wish me luck.

I see a lot of strange shit at the Rio every day– freaky hairdos, outlandish and/or offensive fashion choices, grown men rolling around on the floor like toddlers after a bad beat, and the hookers that slink out of the shadows and into the Amazon Room after midnight to pick up cash-flush final tablers looking to celebrate– but how about a guy who ends Day 1 of the $1,000 NLHE with rebuys event as the second-largest stack and then doesn’t show up to play Day 2? That’s what happened to Vinny Vinh. Read the rest of this entry »

I got the equivalent of an E/O on my first day at the WSOP. Pokernews was in “all hands on deck” mode for the first day of play, and by 9 PM, the field of Event #1– the new $5K Mixed Hold’em event– was more than halved and after spending the day on the floor troubleshooting and helping out some of our new junior reporters, I got to pack it in at a relatively early hour. Pauly had to stay on for a few hours more, so I decided to stick around and play a satellite, not knowing when I’d get the chance again, at least in the next week or two.

There’s already been a lot of ink on the Day 1 chaos, some of it my own. Lines thousands deep, pre-registration fuck-ups, and those god-awful “PokerPeek” decks where the sixes and nines are visually interchangeable. When I decided to hit up the satellites that night, I got to experience it all first-hand. Read the rest of this entry »

Oh my God, it’s already here.

Wasn’t it like, 10 minutes ago that Jamie Gold lucksacked his way to the WSOP final table and got slapped with a lawsuit by Crispin Leyser over half his winnings?

Man, those were the days. Back when the UIGEA was just that little legislative thingamajig everyone was sorta ignoring and the halls of the Rio Convention Center were painted in online poker advertisments. There was a Poker Stars suite and a Full Tilt Suite and an Ultimate Bet Suite and a Bodog suite where the free booze flowed and scantily clad models hocked iPod giveaways and signup bonuses. I blogged the WSOP for Party Poker, got paid through Neteller and played on that site during my off-hours. None of those things could happen this year. Not at the first post-UIGEA World Series of Poker.

Read the rest of this entry »

I wish our first two days in Vegas were as easy as the drive out from Los Angeles. Though we managed to drive 300 miles, pick up our keys, and shlep all our stuff from the car to our apartment at the Del Bocca Vista in less than five hours, Pauly managed to break a mirror in the bedroom before we could even finish unpacking. I’m not superstitious so I didn’t think much of it, but for him, it was akin to the seventh sign of the apocalypse. Everyone’s favorite internet doctor was genuinely spooked.

Read the rest of this entry »