Michael Craig's Journal

The Beginning of the End? Or the End of the Beginning?

There are two kinds of posts I swore I would never including in my Journal: “Best of” posts, and “Odds ‘n’ Ends” posts. With this post, I am now 0-for-2 in Silent Promises Made to People Not Necessarily Listening Anyway.

But I was wrong on both counts. This blog is now approximately as long as The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King. Although I have the Index along the right, there’s no table of contents, and you have to be a really, really avid new reader to look beyond the posts on the first page (i.e., the most recent few).

Some of the older posts are absolutely worthy of your attention. I don’t expect you to read every word I’ve ever written to find them, either - just the words I write when I direct you to certain of my other words (and, of course, my most recent words, which are always ESSENTIAL READING).

So look at My Favorite Posts, from August 13 (and the posts referenced therein). You won’t be sorry, just as I am not sorry I’m directing you to it/them. And read everything I’ve written since. I am particularly fond of Potluck with Shannon Elizabeth, Waking Mike Matusow, and Free Richard Lee!

As far as the dreaded “odds-n-ends” post which this is about to become, I can only say it’s better than nothing, which is what you get sometimes if I need an overriding theme to justify a Journal entry. So here’s what you get:

1. Tony Holden told me an anniversary-related story that he gave me permission to share, so I am doing so, along with an editorial comment I did not tell him when he passed along the story. Jo Anne and I had our 25th wedding anniversary last month, just a week after the World Series. But between issues at home, the Series, and Jo Anne starting teaching, we never made the Grand Plans we had originally discussed: Hawaii, Europe, jewelry, parties. We ordered Chinese take-out and ate it at the condo where I’ve been living and working until the Full Tilt book is finished.

But enough of my sad story. Let me share Tony’s:

Tony and his former wife, Cindy (a/k/a, the infamous “Moll” of Big Deal), were both writers working at home. They had time together in the morning over breakfast as they started their respective days. “Breakfastish” was the time, as Holden described it. The Moll would make breakfast, getting up and starting earlier. Tony would join her and they’d talk about what they were doing that particular day.

Cindy told Tony one morning that she had some lunch meeting or another, but she couldn’t remember who it was with or why. Tony, likewise, had something going on for lunch but he couldn’t remember anything about it. He retrieved his appointment book and discovered that they had scheduled lunch together because it was their wedding anniversary.

Tony: “The funny thing about it, in addition to us both forgetting about it, was that we had a good laugh together about forgetting it.”

To me, the funny thing is that this sounds very much like the worst song ever recorded, The Pina Colada Song, by Rupert Holmes.

2. In appreciation of a long-gone TV series.

I’ve been meaning to do this since before I even had a blog. If anyone wants to put me in touch with whatever entity owns the rights to reproduce the TV series Get a Life on DVD, please do so. Best Buy is stupid with episodes of shows like The Brady Bunch and Lost in Space. Even unpopular, unoriginal old shows find new life on DVD.

But not Get a Life, the brilliant, silly, hilarious 2-season series starring Chris Elliott. Some dudes came out with 2 4-disk DVDs a few years ago. They aren’t even available anymore. I’m assuming people that savvy will sell me the rights for some colored beads.

This show is so funny that we print out copies of home-made transcripts of the 24 episodes and perform them at my house. We have just one of the DVDs and it is too scratched to play. But we still utter lines like “I haven’t been this happy since the day my ass stopped growing.” Or, “Dear Diary. I’m the guy who stole you from Woolworth’s 18 years ago.”

3. I was going to do a Card Player post, but I decided to let them off the hook. I personally like the very few people I know connected with the magazine: Jeff Shulman, BJ Nemeth when he worked there, Michelle Carter. Rich Belsky seems like a nice young fellow. Johnny Walker seems like a good guy. And the Shulmans must make a shitload of money from the magazine, which I assume is their goal.

But it would be hard to find a more bankrupt journalistic venture. I’m sure they have their moments but the magazine is routinely bland or awful and almost always operating under some actual or potential conflict of interest. I was going to go through one issue and point out everything that was bad.

I barely made it past the cover.

First, thee’s that banner “The Official Magazine of World Series of Poker.” I know we’re not Woodward and Bernstein cracking Watergate here, but poker has a HUGE audience. Shouldn’t its leading website/news magazine do better than get into bed with the owners of the event it is covering more than any other?

The cover of the August 30 issue also emphasizes the magazine’s other motto: no cliche can ever be overused. “Jeff Madsen: Poker’s Hottest Young Gun.” In Jeff Shulman’s Publisher’s letter, he calls Allen Cunningham “the most successful young gun in all of poker.”

I gave up for good after Bob Pajich’s summary of the summaries of WSOP events No. 28-39. “The toughest final table of the tournament took place in the $5,000 no-limit deuce-to-seven draw lowball event.” I know this is a little subjective, but is the $50,000 HORSE really ancient history to these guys? TheÂ threeÂ LEAST storied players at that final table were David Singer, AndyÂ Bloch, and Patrik Antonious. The Deuce-to-Seven table, granted, was pretty good, with Greg Raymer, David Williams, Men Nguyen, “superhero” [yes, that's what they called him] Allen Cunningham, “tough-as-nails” [I'm serious here] Layne Flack, and “equally tough” [guess they used up all their adjectives before they got to the winner] Danny Alaei.” I think those guysÂ match up decently against the three I named from the HORSE. But what about Doyle Brunson, Jim Bechtel, Chip Reese, Dewey Tomko, TJ Cloutier, and Phil Ivey?

Of course, you EXPECT Deuce-to-Seven, like the HORSE, to have a great final table because it costs so much to play. If you take that into account at all, you’d probably have to say the $5,000 [no-rebuy] Omaha Eight-or-Better had the best final table: Sam Farha, Phil Ivey, Kirill Gerasimov, Mike Wattel, Brian Nadell, andÂ Jeffrey King. The $1,000-with-rebuys No Limit Hold ‘Em also had a powerhouse final table: Allen “superhero” Cunningham, Tom Franklin, John Hoang (12 tourney wins since 2004, $1.5M in lifetime winnings), Tim Phan (almost $1M in winnings in 2 years), Andy Bloch, and Alex Jacobs (already $800k this year).

Heck, the other $1,000-with-rebuys hold ‘em had a pretty tough final table: Tony G, David Plastik, John Spadavecchia, Ralph Perry, Juha Helppi, and, of course, Phil Hellmuth.

But back to my very brief attempt to document Card Player’s work.

Next paragraph: “Erick Lindgren faced wonder boy [not young gun?] Jeff Madsen at another final table, and an ‘Eskimo’ tried to add more loot to his already impressive tournament purse against a table of pure sharks in the form of Eric Froehlich and Jeffrey Lisandro.”

Pure sharks? I had to give up.

I know those summaries are hard to write. I’ve done that kind of writing and you are constantly fighting to avoid repeating the same phrases. The Card Player guys are losing the battle:

“A few big names pulled up a seat”

“normal went out the window”

“The first cards hit the air”

“Lindgren continued to live up to his billing as ‘most feared player at the table’”

“the odds were against most of them”

“there was no outrageous front-runner”

“This ace sent both players into a frenzy”

“The cards hit the air”

“he hit the rail”

“Hellmuth re-entered the bust-out business”

“Fasen hit the rail”

“The player being called ‘boy wonder’”