Mission WSOP

Christmas has come and gone and now I’m a rock star thanks to Guitar Heroes.  Actually, I pretty much am finding the game difficult on any level other than Easy.  I am looking forward to spending my gift cards at Borders and Best Buy and will smell much better doing it thanks to some new soap and cologne for Christmas.

My bankroll is stuck in neutral lately and after a 4th place finish in a Stud tournament last night, I’m at $2075.

A message to all of you out there who feel compelled to ask me to stake you… don’t!  If I want to stake you, I will seek you out and do so.  In the mean time, I am losing my patience with all of the requests as of late.  I feel like I’m walking through a village of homeless people every time I sign on to AOL Instant Messenger.

Finally, I was so disappointed recently when Yahoo ran a story featuring the Top 40 Most Interesting Sports Figures of 2007 as voted on by bloggers… but no one asked this blogger to participate!  Sure, I have a readership of maybe 43 but still… I have an opinion and I fit their expectation of being "basically a big city white guy in their 20s and 30s."

So, here is my Top 15:

15 (tie). Randy Moss/Terrell Owens
Two guys who just can’t help you win and are a major distraction are on teams with a combined 28-2 record.  Lucy, you got some ’splainin’ to do!

14. OJ Simpson
The former Heisman winner turned retired bumbling detective. (Hint: OJ, look in the mirror… you’ll find what you are looking for!)  Now, he’s a candidate for America’s Dumbest Criminal with a brief summer news affair where he was caught on tape committing a heist of his own stuff.  Way to go, OJ, we knew you had it in you.

13. Tim Donaghy
In the scandal that just couldn’t get any steam behind it, I still think Tim deserves some kudos for costing (or winning) millions of degenerate gamblers everywhere some dough.

12. Floyd Mayweather
I want to make a joke about Dancing With The Stars but I’m afraid Floyd Mayweather might read this and come to my house at 4 am when I’m sleeping and hurt me real bad.  An MMA run in 2008 could make Floyd a Top 10 candidate for sure. 

11. David Beckham
I had something realy interesting and funny to say about Becks but I’m going to hold out for millions and then totally not deliver.

10. Tony Romo
He went from bumbling the snap in a key playoff game to 13-2 and nailing Carrie Underwood and Jessica Simpson.  This guy might be my hero.

9. Roger Clemens
He’s retired… no wait… he’s not retired… no wait… he’s retired… no wait… he’s not retired.  Boy, that’s old.  I guess Clemens thought so, too.  Here’s a new suggestion.  He used steroids… no wait… he didn’t use steroids… no wait… he used steroids… no wait… he didn’t use steroids.  If ESPN makes a reality show about this guy I hope I can account for my whereabouts when the program director is found dead.

8. Tom Brady
All he does is win.  And now they give him some real targets to throw to and he makes the game look easier than ever.

7. Barry Bonds
He probably should be higher but eclipsing the home run record was anti-climactic and the rest of the Bonds story is so played.  Although the highlight has to be the 100s of interpretations of the Hank Aaron speech.

6. Bill Belichick
Cheaters never win?  Someone needs to put out an inquiry on this one then!

5. Brett Favre
It’s always big news when you are able to get off my "I hate how overrated this guy is" list.  Somehow Favre put me in my place in 2007.  Has he always been that good and I was just blind to it?  I’m sure he’ll make two or three well-timed choke throws in the playoffs to help me get to a place where I can put him back on that list.

4. Gilbert Arenas
Agent 00… helped his team in the best way he knew how: he got injured and out of their way.  I’m rooting for him though.  Maybe he can go the route of TO and Randy Moss and end up on some juggernaut of a team and we’ll forget all about the mugging and trash talking.  The Celtics could use one more player.

3. Pacman Jones
Made it rain, wrestled and then disappeared into oblivion as he tries to convince the NFL to let him back.  Adam had such a lock on the #1 spot for me that he only slipped two spots when he failed to make the news in the second half of ‘07.  Someone call up Jones and tell him I got a big stack of $1 bills for his 3rd place finish!

2. Michael Vick
Public enemy #1 finishes #2 on my list and in most eyes, Vick equates to a pile of #2.  Now he’s behind bars and fading out of the hot button topics of the public.  This is a good thing as he was a mine waiting to blow up in the face of anyone who stepped out and commented in any way other than Michael Vick should be burned, stoned, hung, shot by firing squad, etc.

1. Jimmy Rollins
Allow me to go local… he told us the Phillies were the team to beat in 2007 and then went out and backed it up by helping the Phillies storm from behind and put a dagger in the heart of millions of Mets fans.  Plus, he was named MVP and had 20 doubles, triples, home runs and stolen bases in the same year.  And then there was his biggest feat of 2007: he knocked the Eagles out of the top news spot in Philadelphia and put the Phillies into the spot of team most talked about going into 2008.

Lots of random stuff today.  I continued my hot streak with a few more cashes and two more final tables.  One final table in a PL Omaha Hi/Lo tournament (I think it is my first ever MTT cash in PL Omaha Hi/Lo - a game I don’t play much) and a disappointing 7th place finish at the $2000 Guaranteed Stud tournament last night.  It was disappointing only in the fact that I always expect to win when I play Stud.

Through my play the bankroll has been bumped to $1275+.  I am playing “lights out” poker right now.  Last night, John Juanda was holding a chat session on Full Tilt and I got to ask him a few questions since the chat session was at around 5 or 6 am.  I talked to him about cashing in tournaments and he basically said you need to Top 3 in tournaments and don’t sweat the cashing part.  That’s always something I struggle with when I get really close and I tend to tighten up a little more than I probably should. 

I texted myself yesterday to remember to mention a few things during my next blog and hopefully I can cover those here.

It’s fantasy football season again and I am still retired from playing.  The last season I played of fantasy football I went undefeated and the season before I lost only 2 games.  I just can’t get into it anymore.  If you play, draft a strong running back and if you have the top pick and pass on LaDainian Tomlinson, you are insane!  You are going to hear something from me that you never hear from any other person talking about fantasy football… the quarterback position is overrated and the tight end position is underrated.  I’m not saying that you should draft a tight end high and wait until your 5th or 6th pick to grab a QB but I have done that before and it can work out.  The reason?  Take the #1 QB and compare him to the #8 QB and then take the #1 TE and compare him to the #8 TE… you’ll see a huge productivity difference.

Here’s this year’s example: (Using a random fantasy football prognosticator online)

QB #1 - Peyton Manning - 360.4 points
QB #8 - Tony Romo - 296.1 points
Difference of Production - 64.3 Points (4.0 PPG)

TE #1 - Antonio Gates - 160.9 points
TE #8 - Alge Crumpler - 94.6 points
Difference of Production - 66.3 Points (4.2 PPG)

Now, this may not seem like a huge difference but the key to fantasy football success is beating your opponent position-by-position.  When you look at the combination, which one would you rather have?  Manning & Crumpler or Romo & Gates?  You know if you have Manning or Gates you are going to get exactly what is expected but the upside of Romo is huge compared to Crumpler.  And the downside?  If Crumpler gets hurt, his replacement will be lucky to receive for 40 yards per week.  If Romo gets hurt, the biggest gold mine in fantasy football is nailing the right backup quarterback.  Don’t neglect the tight end!

Quick Top Ten

My Top 10 Favorite Sports Jerseys I Own:

1. 2007-08 LaDainian Tomlinson #21 Chargers Jersey (Powder Blue)
2. Vince Young #10 Titans Jersey (Dark)
3. LeBron James High School Jersey
4. Randall Cunningham UNLV Jersey
5. Randall Cunningham Vikings Jersey
6. Personalized Sixers Jersey (Joseph #13)
7. Terrell Owens Black #81 Eagles Jersey
8. William Thomas #51 Eagles Jersey (Been Worn Out)
9. Cris Carter Ohio State Jersey
10. Carmelo Anthony Dark Blue Nuggets Jersey

Sure, it isn’t the traditional top ten and sadly enough, some jerseys missed the cut!  What was I thinking when I bought that Mike Modano Dallas Stars jersey… I hate hockey!

So, why did I bring up jerseys?  I noticed something about 6 months back and it keeps coming up time and again.  The reverse racism of football jersey choosing.  Before I see the person, if I see an Eli Manning jersey, I know it is going to be worn by a black guy and if it is a Plaxico Burress jersey it’ll be worn by a white guy.  On the field Marvin Harrison is black and Peyton Manning is white… off the field Harrison is across the back of a white guy and Manning is across the back of a black guy.

Yesterday, I saw 6 jerseys and it was the same thing:  Jeremy Shockey, Drew Brees and Tom Brady were all worn by African-Americans and Larry Johnson, Donovan McNabb and Brian Westbrook were all worn by Caucasians.  It’s such a weird phenomenon.  Maybe it’s just a coincidence.

The Phillies are hotter than ever.  They swept the Mets and have won 6 straight and are now 2 back… this is where they suck me in and it ends in disappointment in October.  You know what… i don’t care!  It was lots of fun the last two years and will be lots of fun this year too.

Finally, the final numbers are in for the month of August and I’ve had a few more visitors this month than last but still not a ton.  Thanks to those of you who have stopped by.  I’m thinking of a way to drive traffic to my site.  Any suggestions, please e-mail me at bjoseph22@comcast.net. 

The best feature though is anyone who found my site through a search.  Here were the two searches that clicked on my site:

“Where can I buy a spiderpig?” and “Pearljammer interview”.  I can’t wait to see why people accidentally come across my site through searches.  Maybe I should just start typing Britney Spears and random thoughts afterwards… I’m sure that’ll get some net attention. 

You know… I almost forgot to mention that David Beckham is most likely out for the rest of the season in his MLS debut year.  This will bring the Year 1 Beckham season to status of huge disappointment.  So much for Becks revolutionizing soccer in the US… he may have actually set it back this year.

Well… I lost my mind over the last week or so trying to accomplish my goal and did the usual, "Let me enter a decent-size buy-in tournament and do this in one shot" move.  And… I didn’t do it in one shot.  So, the figure is down to $134.34. 

I’ve made an executive decision… The Mission Restart #1!  I need to now win $7/day to get over the $2000 mark.  I remember talking to Steve about this over the weekend and he said "Why do you not quit when you hit the $5.77 in a day?"  And I had to say "Because I’m an idiot!" 

Hopefully, this time around I won’t go insane and will be able to do it the right way.

David Beckham finally played… I don’t think anyone cared.  It was soccer.

I have yet to have back-to-back losing days as I added $19.45 to the bankroll and moved the figure to $280.51.  Since July 1st, that was my 5th best day and much needed after my biggest loss the previous day.  I started off the day dropping about $20 in a rash of bad beats when my opponent managed to hit 5 gut shots over the course of 10 hands.  I stepped up to the $1/$2 table and took my biggest risk and quickly won the $20 back and then as the table grew to 7 players, I left as I prefer more short handed games.

Pacman Jones may be joining TNA (the rival wrestling operation competing with WWE).  Sounds right up his alley.

David Beckham continues to be hurt and may not play the next game whenever that is.  You’d think by my blog that I was a big soccer fan but I’m just fascinated with the Beckham invasion and the ineptitude of the LA organization in thinking that Beckham will revolutionize the American game.

On the flip side, Freddie Adu is leaving the US to play in Portugal.  Losing a great American talent such as Freddie Adu seems to me as a bigger deal than it is being made out to be.  Maybe I just don’t understand the game.

Today, I increased my bankroll by over 10% with a solid day/night of play but failed to hit the home run again getting sloppy late in the $3 tourney.  For the day I added $29.62 to the bankroll… bringing the total to $306.11. 

I made it deep into the $3 tournament again with 88 players entered I finished 20th.  I flopped two pair and failed to put the player who went all-in on having the nut straight when a gut shot straight hit the board on the turn.  I couldn’t put the player on a straight after he called a big bet on the flop from me.  The board was 9-J-2 and I bet 1000 into a 800 pot.  He called and the turn was a 10.  I had 9-2 and he had K-Q and that was my tournament as I failed to improve on the river.

Beckham was a no show again for the latest Galaxy game.  This time they lost.  No one cared I’m sure as all it is that they want to see Beckham play a few minutes just to feed their insatiable appetite for the guy.

My eyes are barely open at the moment.  I didn’t arrive home from work today until 10 PM and spent a little bit of time with Lisa and hit the gym for only an hour because I am totally spent.

On the good side, apparently I play online poker well totally exhausted because I was able to bring my WSOP bankroll to $253.42, a +$18.99 increase today.  And I only played for 30 minutes tops.  That puts my 1/8 of the way there in about 30 days.  I am 9 days ahead of schedule and have had just 2 losing days since starting my endeavor and 2 losing days since blogging.  That’s 8 winning days and 2 losing days… not too bad.  Throw in the days pre-blog and I’m 90% winning days and $45 ahead of target.

Looks like if you put a chunk of money on the arrest of teen celebrities, Lindsay Lohan (technically no longer a teen) just cost you a notch by getting arrested a week early.  Lohan was arrested Tuesday for DUI, driving with a suspended license and cocaine possession.  Lohan later denied the charges but in the court of public opinion, I’m sure this isn’t going to help her 2nd movie of the summer coming this Friday.  You know the movie that is not The Simpsons Movie. 

Game 2 of the Beckham ERA in LA went off… and no Beckham.  Sadly, the LA fans will just enjoy Beckham parading the sidelines.  Despite Beckham playing just 1/15th of the first 2 games, ESPN announced that Beckham’s debut was the highest rated soccer game ever televised on ESPN.  1.5 million people watched the 1-0 loss that had Beckham appear for 12 minutes.

Finally, one of my favorite baseball players announced that he was retiring… then turned around and hit a grand slam.  Astros’ Craig Biggio announced he was retiring at the end of the season.  Biggio has 3000 hits and he’s the only player in major league history with 600 doubles, 250 HRs, 3000 hits and 400 steals.  He’s a 7-time all-star and played numerous positions including catcher despite mostly being a second baseman.  Biggio might be the most underrated player due to his under-the-radar workman-like effort.  He made the playoffs four times and the World Series once. 

If Biggio ain’t a Hall Of Famer on the first ballot, I know nothing about baseball.

My 2nd setback was a decent sized one but I’m still ahead of schedule by a few days.  A -$23.09 day brought the total back to $215.12.  I’m still 4 days ahead of schedule but it was an absolutely frustrating day as I could never find a groove all day.  Hopefully, the next day will be more kind.

The lowlight of the day was having Aces and Queens with a 10 showing against a player without a pair showing and his high card showing being a 10.  He had a pair of 10s with no straight or flush draw and was raising me the whole way.  On 7th street, my hand failed to improve but he hit the case 10 to lock up the hand with trip 10s.  Basically, he hit a one outer which saved his bluff.  There were others involved in the hand earlier and it cost me almost $6 and a $16 pot.  If he called me down and hit, I would have been surprised… but he raised the whole way with nothing and hit trips on 7th… that’s just sick!

David Beckham made his LA Galaxy debut… 12 whole minutes of nothingness.  It’s so unlike soccer to have an uneventful 12 minutes.  I just can’t believe i missed it!  I hope my sarcasm is well hidden here.

Armed with feedback from my small readership, I will attempt to write a more solid blog entry tonight.  The grind toward $2k continues to bode well as the bankroll went to $233.09 tonight.  That’s +$11.80 for you math wizards out there.  I wish I had more time to devote to playing as I think I could really go higher with my goal.  I hit the nearly $12 mark in less than 40 minutes and am loving playing mostly stud.

So, why the limited time?  Let’s break down a typical day in the life:

9 AM - 10 AM: At some point in this hour, I roll out of bed.

10 AM - 11 AM: Check work e-mail, personal e-mail, send information to store teams (I’m a District Manager for Blockbuster Video), call stores, check voice mail, check work e-mail #2, call more stores.

11 AM - 11:15 AM: Shower, dress, out the door.

11:15 AM - 11:30 AM: Hit Wawa, grab a Red Bull, eat some toasted ravioli.

11:30 AM - 12:30 PM: Drive, listen to Howard Stern in between calling stores and returning customer complaint calls.

12:30 PM - 4 or 5 PM: Visit a store, log the visit.

5 PM - 7 PM: Varies… sometimes it’s just checking work e-mail again sometimes it’s returning more phone calls.  Tonight it was teaching a New Hire Orientation class until 8:30 PM.  Occassionally, I have to interview, hire or fire someone too.

7 PM - 8 PM: Drive home.

8 PM - 11 PM: Varies (especially the arrival time home).  Sometimes I spend some limited but valuable time with Lisa (my girlfriend), sometimes I get a chance to dig into playing poker early, most of the time it is spent combining one or both of these activities with catching up on my massive DVR recordings.  And somewhere in there I have to eat.

11 PM - MIDNIGHT: Hit the gym.  I try and do 2 miles on the treadmill, exercise my torso and abs and then stop at Wawa on the way home for a pint of milk and a banana.

MIDNIGHT on: If my perfect schedule works out then I’m hitting the online tables at an earlier time than normal.  I catch up on the news through my Newsgator account or on Yahoo and fit in some time to blog and if necessary any work I let slide through the cracks that I can complete at home on my work laptop.

Around 4 AM: Nap… I can’t call it sleep anymore… sleep would be more than 4 or 5 hours.

And this is a less hectic day.  No fire-drill conference calls or issues in stores or the day having to start earlier because I have to drive to a Maryland store or have a debrief with my boss.  I estimate that I have slept 20 hours in 4 days this week.  That’s roughly the amount of Red Bulls and Moutain Dews I’ve had.

I mentioned Newsgator earlier… this is a dream come true for me.  If you are not familiar, Newsgator is an RSS Reader.  Basically, an RSS reader allows you to sign up for various News Feeds (including the Mission WSOP blog) and check in for the latest updates on a daily basis.  Tonight I found that I could link to Norman Chad’s articles in the Washington Post.  His latest article talks about how it is impossible to make any form of gambling illegal because people will always find away to drink, gamble and make whoppee.  His words, not mine.  It’s one of Chad’s less funny pieces but a slam dunk once again.  Chad has to be my favorite writer and I’ve been reading his stuff for at least 15 years.

The Newsgator Feed Reader is amazing because it’s like setting up your very own online newspaper.  Never will I have to worry about accidentally reading an article by Michelle Malkin again. (How am I doing with the links?)  While I’m new to Newsgator, I am an instant fan and recommend it to anyone who is a news junkie like myself who just has failed to find the time to sit down and enjoy a newspaper.

Poor Becks!  It looks like David Beckham is not going to be able to play this weekend where his expected debut with the LA Galaxy was supposed to occur.  The ankle is too swollen and he left just a glimpse of hope for those waiting to see his debut.  The annointed savior of American soccer has said he may step into the game late.  "I’m here for five years.  I’m not here just obviously for the game on Saturday."  Maybe I’m a bit pessimistic but I feel like the Beckham-era will be more prima donna than premiere player. 

More Bad Newz for Mike Vick.  Despite his apology to Falcons’ team owner Arthur Blank, animal rights group PETA is planning to protect in front of the NFL league offices in NY on Friday morning.  Last time a public figure experienced this Don Imus was fired… let’s see if this forces the NFL to take action.  Vick’s new shoe has been shelved by Nike and it probably doesn’t help that PETA has planned to tell its’ 10 million members to boycott Nike, too.

So many roads this nightmare of a situation could go for all parties involved but it would be nice for Vick to ask the team for an unpaid leave while he handles the business of a federal trial but then again, who am I to ask a guy to walk away from $6 million.  The guy hasn’t been convicted yet so I really don’t see how the league or the team can react until due process has been followed.

I’m not sticking up for Vick in any way.  I just think these ultra-sensitive groups consistently overreact prior to all of the facts being sorted out.  The difficult part is that in the end, they are probably right to call for such a swift action taken… it looks bad for Ron Mexico.

The best news of the day was that Vick’s trial was assigned to US District Judge Henry E. Hudson.  Hudson is known for keeping trials moving and US District Court in Richmond is known as the "rocket docket" for getting cases handled quickly.  No word on whether or not Vick has considered Rocket Docket as a name for his next canine purchase. 

Finally, Poker After Dark should be excellent Friday night (well… Saturday).  If you can stay up late or DVR it, the final four of Poker Analyst Week is going on and Gabe Kaplan is the chip leader.  Mr. Kotter is always fun to watch and I’m glad to catch the replay of this since I missed it a few months ago.  Joining Gabe will be Mike Sexton, Phil Gordon and Howard Lederer.  All week, Kaplan has been on point with his play and his humor and it’s been a great week on one of the best poker shows on TV.

Today, I struggled but still managed to get back on track with a winning day.  Low limit is so rough to play because it is such a small amount of money to win.  I was able to claw, bite and scrape my way to a +$4.23 to $194.23.  I’m slowly sliding backward on my pace and now just 4 days ahead of the pace needed to pull this off.  But it’s way too early to have any reaction to my progress.

I’ve obviously spent a lot of time talking about poker since embarking on this hare-brained quest, partially because I’m an ego maniac and love attention and partially because if I could pick one thing to do 24 hours a day, it would be poker.  It doesn’t even have to be playing it.  It could be watching it, talking about it, writing it, whatever.  If there were a 24-hour poker channel, I’d be the #1 viewer.  The thing that is most difficult though is having a discussion with a non-poker player or someone who fails to really understand the game.  It usually always ends up coming down to a discussion of the non-poker member of the conversation discounting poker as a game of skill.

Recently, I have had a few of those discussions with my brother who consistently fails to grasp the level of skill involved in poker.  The first discussion occurred when watching Poker After Dark two weeks ago.  The hand involved Clonie Gowen who held Ace-3 suited.  She was the big stack and made a raise only to have another player go over the top all-in but that player was short stacked.  That player held pocket Kings.  At that point, I quickly did the match and figured she would be getting better than 2-to-1 on her money so she had to call.  Of course, my brother disagreed because all she had was an "ace with a three".  I tried to break down the math and it helped that the percentages were right there on the screen but he just didn’t get it.  The discussion then became rather juvenile and unproductive and every hand after that the comment was made that whatever the player had was not as good as an "ace with a three".  Clonie did call and won the hand when she hit the ace. 

The second discussion occurred tonight when talking about the Final Table of the WSOP.  I was criticizing Danny Sheridan’s oddsmaking on the players at the Final Table of the Main Event and I commented that Sheridan’s odds took very little into account the skill of the player and focused mainly on the chip stacks.  My brother felt that the odds should basically be made based on chip stacks because if they made it this far, they were all about the same skill level.  Once I attempted to argue that that was not the case as there were players with serious deep tournament experience still remaining and that some of the players may have defied the odds slightly to get this far, the discussion broke down into a commentary on luck vs. skill.  Rather than bore you with the details of this inane argument, luck is absolutely a factor when it comes down to individual isolated results but overall success in poker comes down to the skill level of the player involved.

Here’s a few analogies that bring to light the luck vs. skill argument.  In an individual sport such as boxing, a boxer could outbox his opponent for 11 rounds and then get caught with a crisp shot in the 12th round and go down and not get back up.  Despite 11/12th of the fight being dominated by that boxer, they lose.  If you look at the Mike Tyson-Buster Douglas fight, you will struggle to find someone to say that Douglas was the more skilled boxer going in yet he won the fight.  I’m not saying it’s luck, it just is what it is.  Then there’s the ‘86 World Series.  The Red Sox were almost the World Series Champions that year.  Unfortunately, the ball went through Buckner’s legs.  The last time I checked, no one has discounted the Mets World Series Championship because they only won because they got lucky that the ball went through Buckner’s legs.  That’s just part of the game apparently. 

Dumbest Person In The World Candidate #2

The football world is filled with dumb players and the first two candidates are from the world of football.  Michael Vick could be headed to jail in the near future due to his possible involvement in illegal dog fighting and cruelty to animals.  The details of the crimes are grim and include a losing Bad Newz Kennel dog being doused with water and electrocuted.  What’s the Bad Newz Kennel?  Apparently, it is the Kennel that Vick says he had nothing to do with but witnesses and other circumstantial evidence would say otherwise… like a reference on his own webpage that lists his hometown as Newport News (BadNewz).  So far, Vick has played dumb but dug himself a deep hole that he may not be able to wiggle his way out of.  The hole is much deeper than any of the shallow graves located on his property for the mistreated animals that either were killed during their barbaric battles or afterward if they let down their owners.  The biggest challenge is going to be that while Vick has proven on the football field that he can get out of the most unlikely situations, his athleticism will not help him here and without that, Vick could be dead in the water.  So, either Vick is a victim as he claims and would make him one of the dumbest people alive as he pins the blame on family members who took advantage of his hospitality and used his home as a dog gladiator arena OR he’s even dumber because he put a lucrative career on the line in order to enjoy watching a highly illegal activity take place.  We crucify Barry Bonds because we think he used steroids and Terrell Owens because we think he’s a selfish jerk… I’m hoping the Vick backlash is a little tougher on him.  If you are unsure why I say this still, read the details for yourself.

So, life is not heavenly in the City Of Angels for Becks.  The long flight from England has reaggravated David Beckham’s ankle injury and now his long-awaited (and televised) American debut against Chelsea this weekend may not happen.  The US soccer world (and ESPN who can’t stop plugging the event) is on pins and needles waiting to see what will unfold.  They will be steaming if Beckham is on the bench at gametime.  It won’t be the first group that would be steaming over the Beckham effect.  Beckham has alienated his teammates over his pay as Becks will make $6.5 million this year. The team’s other top player and captain, Landon Donovan, will make $900k.  There’s even one player that is slated to make $18,000 this year.  A shift manager at McDonald’s makes a little over $20,000.  The rumors have swirled that Becks will be made captain and Donovan will push for mutiny or the team may go on strike… all is not well in Los Angeles.  You gotta love a good soap opera.

All is well in Vegas as the 2007 WSOP comes to a close.  They are down to heads up action and Jerry Yang is absolutely dominating the Final Table.  Yang’s $225 satellite may become an $8 million + payday as he currently sits at $117 million in chips versus Tuan Lam’s $10 million in chips.  Yang has put 6 of 7 of the players to the rail including my pick, Alex Kovchenko who held on to finish 4th.  Yang took out players so fast in the beginning that it looked like it was going to be one of the fastest final tables ever.  He eliminated players on Hand #15 (Philip Hilm), Hand #21 (Lee Watkinson), Hand #28 (Lee Childs) and Hand #56 (Hevad "Rain" Khan).  His run was stopped by Raymond Rahme eliminating John Kalmar on Hand #60 and the newswire stirred at how the final table may wrap up in one of the quickest finals ever.  Then, down to the Final Four, it took 107 hands for a player to get eliminated and Yang did it again by eliminating Kravchenko.  Then he eliminated crowd favorite Raymond Rahme two hands later.

Yang’s domination is amazing… He won 67 of 169 hands getting down to heads up and so far in 21 hands of heads up play (more than the last two years of heads up play combined), Yang has won 17 of them for a total of 84 out of 190.  If Yang doesn’t win, it will be a storied collapse.  if he does, it will be one of shear and utter domination.  Unfortunately, it’s 6:15 AM here and I have work… guess I’ll be finding out who wins when I wake up.  If Lam makes a comeback, it may still be going on.

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.