Mission WSOP

Hey everyone still willing to look here and see a complete and utter lack of updates on a day to day basis.  Thought I would drop in and provide some updates and throw out an idea that I’m working on for the site.

First, let’s hit the updates.  Online, I’ve gone to playing mostly PL Omaha for the past month or so.  This has been a positive bankroll move and I am currently sitting at $3900 on Full Tilt, $270 on Poker Stars and $110 on Bodog bringing the Online Poker bankroll to a highwater mark of $4280.  So, in roughly a year, I have turned $50 into $4,280… that’s a 8460% ROI if my calculations are correct.  I would say that is money well spent.

Some minor issues with my online game have been my inability to devote much time to poker.  I went to Niagara Falls last week and have been focused on my writing for Baseball Digest Daily and Seamheads and loving this baseball season which totally provides me with little time to play.  I qualified for the WSOP qualifier on Poker Stars and then forgot about it and missed the final qualifier on Saturday… DOH!!!!!!!  I haven’t been following the WSOP as religiously as I normally would since I am still a bit disappointed that I wasn’t there this year but it is amazing to see how many pros have won bracelets this year… I think it will be a good thing for the game.

Live poker has been nearly non-existent for me.  I played in the $200 Buy-In Stud event at the Borgata Poker Open, lasted about 6 hours and busted out somewhere in the middle of the pack.  In our home games, I notched a 2nd place finish and won last night.  Last night’s game was pretty amazing from the standpoint that I was never really in trouble until I got heads up and then had to double up by hitting an 8-outer to get to even in chips.  Then, I slowly but surely took out Drew who is one of the tougher players there.  I haven’t calculated the points for the site after last night’s results but I am pretty sure that win will catapult me to a place I don’t think I’ve ever been in in a season — first on the points list.  I am always near the top but this is my first stop there.  I also notched my fifth win and 18th cash in 46 tournaments.

As far as my thoughts on this site.  As soon as this season’s WSOP ends, I will be focused on accomplishing building a poker bankroll big enough to tackle at least one event at the WSOP in ‘09.  If anyone out there reads the site and has a desire to do the same in ‘09 and also has an interest in blogging about it, I will be looking to add a few writers to the site in the next two months.  My e-mail address is bjoseph22=at=comcast.net (sub @ for =at=).  One thing I’m looking for is people willing to practice similar strict bankroll management practices to prove that a smart player can work their bankroll successfully.  This would all be discussed prior to giving access to the blogging piece.  If no one responds, then it will just continue to be me.

The truth is out there… you just have to know where to look.  (Maybe I shouldn’t watch ‘X-Files’ all night long.)  I’ve been playing poker a long time and I’ve realized there are some things that are absolutely true.  Some of them are about my game, some are about the game in general but all of them are 100% true.

1. Pocket Aces is the best hand in poker.

Next time you are sitting at a table and a player says they hate pocket aces, I have a suggestion.  Punch them in the face!  I think they might enjoy it.  They obviously don’t know what is good for them anyway.  I almost put #1 as "I always win with aces" but that’s not exactly true.  I would estimate that I win with pocket aces roughly 90-95% of the time.  Nothing is more exciting than looking down and seeing two matching A’s or seeing two aces pop up on the screen when playing online. 

2. If you want to tell an entertaining poker story, a bad beat story is definitely NOT the way to go!

I used to tell these stories all the time.  Then, I’d be sitting down at a food court near the poker room and hear some schmo on his cell phone boring his friend to death with a story of how some donkey called with J3 under the gun and flopped a boat.  Here’s the deal with bad beat stories, no one really cares.  I remember walking through the area right outside of the Amazon Room at the World Series of Poker in 2005 with my girlfriend.  She would count the number of times she heard the words "… and then a/an (fill in the blank with a card) came on the river!"  It was usually followed by some expletive filled sentence about how lucky his nit opponent was.  I think when we boarded the plane she was in triple digits.

3. It’s more fun to be slightly behind on a coin flip than slightly ahead.

If the two hands flipped pre-flop are 9d-9s and Ah-Kh, I hope I have AK.  It’s just so stressful when you have to root for your hand to hold up.  You are biting your nails on every street and if you fall behind, you usually only have 2 outs for the re-suck.  On the other hand, you have a shot to take the lead on the flop, turn and river.  Sometimes, you are even lucky enough to get additional outs on the turn or river depending on how the board plays.  Granted, I’m giving up a few percentage points but I’ll take it.

4. Good players win and bad players lose.

You have to look at poker players more like pitchers in baseball and less like boxers.  What do I mean by that?  Steve Carlton was probably the greatest left-handed pitcher of all-time and Muhammad Ali was probably the greatest heavyweight boxer of all-time.  Ali won 92% of the time while Carlton won 57% of the time but their success is relative.  In poker, the best players don’t always win but the better players perform better than the less talented players.  If you look at the top 10 players on Card Player in 2007, only one of those players did not have a true poker pedigree.  David Pham, the Player of the Year in 2007, actually won the Player of the Year in 2000 and finished 2nd in 2004.

5. Poker is 65% skill, 10% luck and 25% timing.

A lot of times, timing is mistakenly identified as luck.  Poker is a truly mathematical game.  My educated guess is that if you push with AK and get called by a lower pair 1000 times, you will probably win about 450-500 times.  The thing that I can’t predict is how many times that will be for all of your chips and how many times it will only be for a small percentage of your chips.  An above average player will win his fair share of tournaments but if he/she is playing variable buy-ins, those wins might come in the lower buy-in tournaments rather than the larger buy-in tournaments.  It explains the Top 10 money list in poker and why it includes a player like Chris Moneymaker who is nothing more than an average player who caught fire at just the right time.

6. Live lower limit cash games have moved beyond the books.

I’ve read a lot of books about poker and nothing can prepare you for the way that poker is played at a $1/$2 No Limit game.  The game has moved away from anything resembling poker described in any poker book out there.  The biggest change is pre-flop play as it is now considered standard to raise to anywhere from $12-$25 pre-flop and it is expected that 2-4 players will call said raise.  What’s particularly puzzling is that a player will limp for $2 and then call a $25 raise.  This used to be the way that online cash games went but these players moved to the online game and now the online game has actually become more standard in its play.  I never thought I’d say that.

7. You’re never really sorry.

When you flip over your hand and you are behind I will bet you $10,000 that your first thought isn’t "Man, I hope I don’t hit my card here and suck out because I’d hate to see this guy lose."  So, why do you feel the need to apologize when you do?  In my opinion, this is totally disrespectful to the person who lost.  I know it’s supposed to be the right thing to do but it isn’t like you knocked someone over and helped them up.  In this case, you knocked someone over and just kept walking… if you’re really sorry, give me my money back.  Didn’t think so!

8. The online poker laws in the U.S. are ridiculous.

It’s pretty silly that there are laws out there trying to curtail U.S. citizens from playing online poker.  The laws against people playing poker live outside of casinos and legal poker rooms have been so effective that the U.S. government feels they can have the same impact online, I guess.  Join the Poker Players Alliance and help in their fight to legalize online poker. 

9. "The Grand" will be poker’s version of "Caddyshack".

Woody Harrelson, David Cross, Dennis Farha, Cheryl Hines, Richard Kind and Chris Parnell are the main characters and Ray Romano, Jason Alexander, Gabe Kaplan, Werner Herzog and a pile of poker players also appear in the movie.  It hits theaters March 21st and looks like it will be hilarious.  From what I’ve read, most of the movie was improvised and rumor has it the entire final table was improvised as well.

10. Online poker is not rigged.

If you think online poker is rigged, I have two suggestions.  (1) Don’t play online and (2) drop by my home game and you’ll see all the evidence you need.  As to the first point, if you think online poker is rigged then you are a bigger sucker than those people who play the Money Wheel in the casino.  I don’t play Blackjack online because I don’t trust it.  If I didn’t trust online poker to be legitimate, I couldn’t play it.  If you play enough live poker, you will realize that the stuff you see that "only happens online" actually happens everywhere.  Deal with it!

Saturday was a fairly successful day as I picked both winners in the NFL, I was profitable overall for the day, I turned my free $20 shot on Gutshot Poker into $25 and I took down our home game tournament in stylish fashion.  On the flip side, I was bad beat out of the Silver Iron Man despite playing extremely well and I failed to qualify for Surfers Poker’s HORSE Championship.  My bankroll is now at $2119+$25 on Gutshot which bumps it to $2144.

Yesterday’s predictions went fairly well:

Actual Results

Packers 42, Seahawks 20 (Prediction: Packers 27-17)

"Green Bay rolls as Shaun Alexander fails to show again."  I think that’s a pretty accurate description of the game as Green Bay outscored Seattle 27-3 after spotting the ‘Hawks 14 points.  Shaun Alexander had 9 carries for 20 yards.  The Pack are going to be tough for whoever wins today.

Patriots 31, Jaguars 20 (Prediction: Patriots 31-17)

A late Jags field goal robbed me of the glory of being spot on in this game.  Who can beat the Patriots?  I think the answer might be no one.

Sunday’s Round Two Predictions

San Diego 24, Indianapolis 21

Here’s another example of where I may be picking with my heart rather than my head.  This got me in trouble last week when I picked the Bucs to beat the Giants when I actually didn’t think it was going to happen.  This time I have a little more faith in the Chargers as they come into the playoff game with 7 straight wins and boasting bragging rights against Indy since they beat them earlier in the year.  The problem is going to be that Indy is a juggernaut at home… but they are just 3-3 against playoff teams and 0-3 versus playoff teams not from Florida.  LT and Shaun Merriman have gigantic games and the Peyton Manning I remember from two playoff seasons ago will return… and I’ll call last year a fluke.

Cowboys 27, Giants 20

This game will go back and forth but the Cowboys will prevail.  The Eli Manning for President campaign will come to a screeching halt after this week’s game although Tony Romo still makes me nervous as he’s always capable of putting up a clunker.  My prediction is TO plays and has a big game.

So, I’m 5-1 in 6 games picking winners yet I haven’t had a strong enough feeling about any game with the exception of the Packers yesterday to put any $$$ on them against the spread.

Harlabos Voulgaris and myself have a lot in common, we both play poker, we enjoy talking about the game, we’ve both never won a WSOP bracelet.  OK, so it’s a little bit ridiculous for me to even put myself in the same league as "Bob" for even a second but I recently became aggitated when listening to the podcast of Bluff Radio’s "Big Poker Sundays" hosted by "Bob" and Scott Huff.  I think that people like Haralabos need to understand that they should be held to a higher standard when they speak on certain topics in a public forum such as a radio show that is listened to by thousands of poker afficianados.

I’m going to ignore the comments about Jerry Yang as the jury is still out on him as a poker player (and it’s an easy target whenever someone gives half credit to God for winning, well, anything!) and I’m going to pass over the comment about the recent WSOP Circuit event in Atlantic City being something that no one really cares about after conceding that many top pros showed for the event.  What I’d rather focus on is his analysis about Gus Hansen.

Scott Huff was talking about Gus’s success in the Five Diamond Classic at the Bellagio in Decemebr and it looking good for Hansen to go deep.  He then asked Voulgaris to comment on Gus’s return to poker promenience after his success in the early stages of the WPT.  Voulgaris then went on to basically slam the quality of play early on in the WPT and with the caveat that he was not disrespecting Gus stated that the people who played in the first few seasons of the WPT and "especially the people who made the Final Table of season one especially are just not good poker players."  He then tried to backtrack by stating that even if they are good now, they weren’t any good then.  No offense to Bob here but come on, dude!  It’s not like after Season One or Two or even Three there weren’t fairly anonymous poker names that never, ever appeared on the poker map again. 

To further illustrate this, I went and found the 69 players that made Final Tables in Season One and more than half of them, I instantly recognized.  Gus Hansen made two final tables that Season.  Phil Ivey made three and 7 others made two tables: Scotty Nguyen, Layne Flack, Andy Bloch, Chris Bigler, Kathy Liebert, Howard Lederer and Ron Rose.  In my opinion, that’s a pretty impressive list of 9 poker names.  In addition to those names the following players all made final tables: John Juanda, Freddy Deeb, John Hennigan, Mark Seif, Juha Helppi, Phil Gordon, Jennifer Harman, Dewey Tomko, Paul Darden, Phil Hellmuth, Antonio Esfandiari, David Ulliott, Christer Johansson, Allen Cunningham, Tony G, David Pham, David Chiu, Men Nguyen, Tony Ma, Bob Stupak, Chip Jett, Paul Magriel, TJ Cloutier, Alan Goehring, Kirill Gerasimov, Ted Forrest and some guy named Doyle.  Am I missing something here?

I think I’m at 30 views a day now… if any of you 30 are ever listening to Big Poker Sundays when it is live, please call Bob and ask him to explain this for me.

More poker, slowly grinding toward $2,000 (at a little over $1600 now).  I’ve been in a writing rut recently so I haven’t blogged all that much.  Here’s my latest happenings and thoughts:

I qualified for the Silver Freeroll on Full Tilt again.  This is my 3rd shot and what is even better is that Full Tilt has thrown in bonus money for any of their December Iron Men and added bonus money for those who have qualified in any other month.  I stand to earn $225 in bonus money in January thanks to my Iron Man efforts.

January 6th will be a huge day… it’s the return of Omar!  Who is Omar?  Omar is the greatest character in television history.  The modern day Robin Hood of HBO’s "The Wire" is being featured in their commercials which I’m hoping means that Omar will be featured in what looks like will be the final season of "The Wire".

Saturday is my home game tournament.  I missed out in cashing in the last one and actually exited fairly early.  I’m in 2nd in points and would like to climb back to the top of the leaderboard.

I have a much improved SharkScope score since I have full access to the site and have been able to really pick my spots and cash because of it.

I rented the "Bourne" series of movies and I look forward to watching them. 

I watched "She’s All That" and "American Beauty" tonight.  "American Beauty" is easily one of my favorite movies of all time and "She’s All That" should be considered science fiction it is so ridiculous.

Finally, it’s been a while since I did a Top 10… so here it is:

My Top 10 Top 10 (My Favorite 10 Things At This Very Moment)

10. Text messaging

9. Turkey, Stuffing & Mashed Potato Bowl from Wawa

8. Sirius

7. Homicide reruns

6. Quoting Dr. Cox

5. Taylor Swift

4. Kid Nation

3. Sharkscope

2. My Blackberry Curve

1. The Pickle On The Chic-Fil-A Sandwich

Where to begin?  I decided to not update my blog until after the Charity tournament on Full Tilt on Sunday but a lot has happened.  I’ve attached a picture here of the donation thanks to the tournament as $54 was raised and I matched it for a total of $108 donation.  Thanks to all who participated including Tramp1579 from Surfers Poker who won it all and Lynette Chan, a Full Tilt pro, who also participated.  Tramp also eliminated Lynette in 4th on his way to the win.  I was too busy celebrating the Phillies playoff-clinching win to concentrate and went out 12 of 12.

THE PHILLIES ARE IN THE PLAYOFFS!  I didn’t realize my emotional investment until it finally happened.  The Brett Myers pitch to win it was close to an emotional moment for me… thankfully I didn’t have to talk to anyone at the time.  This team is really likable and a lot of guys on there you want to see win.  If Jimmy Rollins isn’t MVP then I don’t know what the criteria is for such an award.  His historic 20th triple was amazing and I’m glad to find out my brother’s heart is strong as he might still be screaming.

The live home game drought continues… kinda.  I cashed for the 4th consecutive tournament but failed to win for the 23rd consecutive time.  I got really unlucky at the end but my opponent was getting nearly 2 to 1 to call.  I had 99 and he held 74 which made me about an 80-20 favorite.  The flop brought a 7 and the turn a 4 which made me a disappointing 3rd place finish.  I collected 3 bounties during the tournament so I netted $25 for the tourney and became the first player to ever cash in 4 consecutive tournaments.

Now, a rant about live games and psychology.  Whatever I say during a poker game is completely to affect my opponent.  I love to get inside another player’s head and make them think about something other than the game when we play.  I obviously got inside the eventual winner’s head, my friend, Chris.  Although he crossed the line that I try to never cross which is taking the verbal jousting to beyond the game itself.  Once I was eliminated, Chris decided to tell me how he really felt about my constant commentary on the way he was playing.  So, either he is completely oblivious to my attempts to shake him or he didn’t care but he was very unhappy about my comments about his tight passive play with the big stack coming down the stretch.

Now, in my defense, the only reason I was especially verbal about his play was due to his undying need to tell the remaining 2 players how aggressive he was going to be on the next hand and how frustrated he was that he was playing so late.  For nearly two hours, Chris said over and over again how he was going to go all-in and he was ready to give up… over and over again.  I would have chalked it up to psychology on his part but he also made the same comments during the week during a 45 minute call we had about how he was going to play different this tournament because he just didn’t care. 

This "new" style for Chris really chalked up to it being his old style minus an early ultra-aggressive move on the flop with AK and called all-in by Kings by Danny Doops who was sick to see a 3 outer on the river for Chris.  Then Chris returned to his completely invisible style and waited out the rest of the players as Drew and I did the leg work eliminating 8 of the 10 players getting down to the final three.  Then Chris outplayed Drew and took it down.

I’m not questioning Chris’ play at all.  The only reason I said anything during the tournament because of his constant BS about how he was going to play differently when he really wasn’t.  And then to take it beyond the game was completely uncalled for, in my opinion.  The worst was that you could see he was waiting for that moment to sink his teeth in because as soon as I was eliminated, Chris was all of a sudden the most chatty player in the world. 

Just a reminder, it took a 4-to-1 underdog suck-out to get rid of me and I didn’t need a 13% suck-out to get that deep.  I’ll continue to say that as long as I don’t get unlucky, I will always be there at the end.  I have 4 consecutive cashes to prove it, too.  And if you want to take a shot at me, do it while we are in the game because as soon as the game is over, I figure we are friendly again but I guess sometimes the truth might hurt!

Finally, I’m 0 for 2 in WSOSP events but am looking forward to the Shorthanded Freeroll and 5-Card Draw tourney this weekend.  Also, I am officially qualified for the Bronze Iron Man Freeroll in two weeks on Full Tilt.  It’s my second Iron Man event and I hope to cash in this one.  Top prize is $1500 and a chance to get to the heads up vs. the pros round.  I’m feeling like I’m running OK so I got a real shot at it.  We’ll see!

Wow… what a hectic week so far and I haven’t even done anything.  Where to start?

The bankroll?  Well, it’s spread out now across three sites: Bodog, Full Tilt and Poker Stars.  The total tally is $966.  The highlight of the week so far was making two final tables last night, finishing 2nd in a $1 Razz tournament on Poker Stars and 6th in a $3 Stud tournament on Poker Stars. 

As for the live games, I played in the US Poker Championship Stud Event.  I did poorly.  The good news is afterwards I won most of my buy-in back at a $1/$2 No Limit cash game.  The Stud tournament at the Taj had a horrible structure and it was very disappointing how poorly it was run.  I started at Table 70 but the Taj does not have a Table 70.  Then it turned into Table 73.  The registration wasn’t spread out so all of the people at my table knew each other because they all signed up together.  The worst part is that our table started 7 minutes after the rest of the tournament started.

Then, the tournament itself.  I was outdrawn every step of the way.  I had made hands on 5th at least three times and they were outdrawn on 6th or 7th.  Two flushes cracked by full houses and a straight outdrawn by a flush.

The cash game was great, I was on point every step of the way.  I made great laydowns and minimized my losses, including only losing $13 with pocket Kings.  Overall, I pocketed +$201 which was most the buy-in for the Stud event.

What about the Phillies?  They won again last night in exciting fashion.  A 14th inning win that pulled them to within just 1 1/2 games of the Mets.  I’m fully immersed now in this playoff race yet again.  Maybe this really is the year! 

And a member of the Dumbest People In The World Hall Of Fame has returned to the news: O.J. Simpson.  O.J. has nearly topped himself this time.  Caught on tape robbing those who apparently robbed him.  You know, I don’t care to know the story all that well but how this guy doesn’t completely lay low after what he did is beyond me.  O.J. should be front page news for at least a few months.  O.J. will be using the "What Happens In Vegas Stays In Vegas" defense with a side order of "I Was Set-Up By The Big Bad Police".  This shouldn’t be as entertaining as it is considering we’re talking about a double murderer who now is accused of robbery and possibly even kidnapping.

I should be heading back to A.C. tomorrow to get in some more cash game play and maybe check out the Borgata Poker Open final table depending on who makes it.  Friday is the Poker Stars WCOOP Razz Event… I can’t wait.  I still have the logistical challenge of transferring the money around but I might have driven my Poker Stars bankroll to that amount by Friday anyway.

Another positive night for the bankroll as $16.80 was added to move the figure to $274.92.  Live play hasn’t been so kind.  Last night, I played in a poker tournament at the Showboat and after busting out the way I did, I had no desire to play the rest of the night.

With the blinds at 1500-3000, I was sitting at 15,000 in chips (not a great place to be).  The first two players to act fold to me and I move all-in for 15k.  The first player calls and I have him covered (he has 11k).  The big stack at the table calls.  Finally, the big blind moves all-in for his last 13k.  At this point I feel like I’m dead as I have Pocket Queens.  The pot is 55k which will get me right back into contention.  Then the hands are revealed.  A6 vs. A8 vs. A10 vs. my QQ.  I feel like I’m so money at this point.  Flop A-6-8-K-10.  Every player hits two pair including the case ace.  Pre-flop I was a 70% favorite to win the hand.  To be 70% when 4 handed is just perfect.  If you put pocket Aces against any 3 random suited hands, it is roughly 50-50.  I was sick.  So I left.

It’s been a long night and morning as my day was packed full of work, poker and the occassional check-in to the current goings on in the world.  My WSOP fund is at $182.39, nearly $40 and 6 days aheaad of schedule.  My night of work ended around 10 PM with enough time to head to the DE Poker Room in Newark, DE, touted as "Delaware’s Only Legal Poker Room".  In between a loud bar and a bank with a free Internet cafe, the DE Poker Room runs almost nightly cash games playing low limit Hold’em and dealer’s choice games.  Tonight, I slid into a $2 max bet Dealer’s Choice table where we played mostly Omaha and 7-Card Stud with the occassional slip into Super Hold’em, Pineapple and 5-Card Stud.  We even played a hand of 5-Card Draw.  After a rough beginning, I found myself struggling to stay ahead of the $3-per-30 minute donation expected and ended the 3 hour session at +$2 for the evening.  An interesting table as I was easily the most aggressive player at the table against a group of calling stations with the older women at the table commenting about how "crazy" it was to raise and then instantly calling me down the entire way.  Overall, it was a fun experience because it is such a rarity to get an opportunity to play anything other than Hold’em.  I look forward to next time. 

Throughout the day, I tuned in and out to the hot sports story of the day: Beckham invades the States!  David Beckham, the biggest name in professional soccer, has been lured across the pond by the Los Angeles Galaxy of MLS thanks to the allure of trying to put soccer into relevancy into the United States and a hefty paycheck of roughly $32 million over 5 years.  Now Beckham is expected to resurrect a near last place team and a sport we call soccer and he calls football.  Soccer optimists are banking on Beckham revolutionizing the game in the US.  Some analysts expect the sexy Beckham to bring women to soccer.  They fail to realize that most women would rather shell out $4 a week to ogle Beckham’s phsyique caught by paparazzi and displayed in pics in the latest issue of Us or People.  Some think Beckham will bring excitement to the game of soccer.  "Becks" scored 3 goals in 31 appearances with Real Madrid last season and assisted on 10 more, roughly once every other game.  In a sport consistently ripped in the US for it’s lack of excitement, the Beckham effect may be bigger in getting new spectators to watch but will they stay once they realize it is still that game where we watch uninterrupted for about 2 hours and if my team scores once an hour, we’re thrilled.  In my opinion, Beckham will get a lot of attention but the game of soccer will not benefit.  Heck, Beckham gets a good amount of attention now in the US and no one has been going out of their way to catch a Real Madrid game in recent memory in the US.  Time will tell but I’m betting on the Beckham effect to be negligable although it still may draw viewers than the Stanley Cup finals that recently took place.  I’d tell you what you missed but I wasn’t watching either.

Dumbest Person In The World Candidate #1: "Pacman" Jones

Hypothetical situation:  You are a mega-talented football player in college, drafted fifth overall in 2005.  After a solid rookie season and an even better second year.  Do you:

(A) Get arrested for public intoxication, disorderly conduct and then three months later get arrested for assault after spitting on a woman following an altercation at a night club in Tennessee.

(B) Make a speech vowing to never see the inside of a courtroom only to find yourself involved in an incident which includes a strip club, $81,000 of your money, a melee and a triple shooting causing you to get suspended for an entire season from the NFL.

(C) After finding out of your suspension from your livelihood, drive your orange Lamborghini around the suburbs of Tennessee at 8:30 AM.  To ensure that situation is as complicated as possible, you put tags on the car that are not associated with the luxury sports car but rather another one of the vehicles you own causing yet another arrest due to a registration violation.

(D) Allow your legal representative to issue a statement accusing a sheriff’s deputy of targeting you in the aforementioned traffic stop claiming the police where singling you out.

(E) All of the above.

If you picked (E) then you too may one day be nominated for dumbest person in the world.  "Pacman", we’ll miss you… good luck in the CFL.  I hear the strip clubs in Toronto are amazing.

Finally, the WSOP Main Event is down to 112 players.  More of the big names have exited and all of the celebs are gone… even Spidey!!!  And the chip leader is a guy named Dag!?!

Besides Dag, there are still 2 past Main Event winners left (Huck Seed ‘96 and Scotty Nguyen ‘98).  There are still 12 bracelet winners in contention (Seed (4), Nguyen (4), Humberto Brenes (2), Lee Watkinson, Kirk Morrison, Daniel Alaei, Bob Slezak, Diego Cordovez, Alexander Kravchenko, John Spadavecchia, Francois Safieddine and William "Bill" Edler).  Of the 19 bracelets won, 5 were won playing No Limit Hold’em, 4 each in Pot Limit Omaha and Omaha Hi/Lo, 2 in Razz and 2-7 Lowball, and 1 in Limit Hold’em and 7-Card Stud.  Three of the bracelet winners accomplished the feat this year: Kravchenko, Edler and Safieddine.

Of the 112 players, more than half have cashed (58 of 112).  Humberto Brenes has cashed the most at 48. In total, the players have collectively cashed 331 times, almost 3 times per player.  Huck Seed and Scotty Nguyen both have cashed 33 times as well.  Rounding out the top 5 cashers are John Spadavecchia with 24 cashes and Chad Brown with 18.  Of the 331 cashes, 32 of them have occurred in the Main Event including 10 players who cashed in 2005’s Main Event.  Brenes again tops the list here with this year’s Main Event going to add to his 6 Main Event cashes including 4th place in 1988.  He did not come the closest though as Julian Gardner lost heads up to Robert Varkonyi in ‘02 and then finished 54th in ‘03 and 32nd in ‘04).

Gus Hansen still remains and is in serious contention.  Lee Watkinson is the pro in the best position sitting at 12th place.  The hottest players coming into the Main Event have to be Jared Hamby, William (Bill) Edler and Kirk Morrison, all currently ranked in the Top 25 in Card Player’s 2007 Player Of The Year rankings.

It should be a fun finish as the field plays down to just 27 on Saturday.